J t

I 1 (J

LI RARY ST. 'i\ \;{'í'S (OLLEG

THE RECONSTRUCTION OF BELIEF

BELIEF IN GOD

BY THE SAM]! AUTHOR

THE EPISTLES OP S
. JOHN
THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT
a'HE EPISTLIt TO THE EPHESIANS.
THE EPISTLE TO THE ROMANS. 2 Vols.
THE INCARNATION OF THE SON OF GOD
(Bampton Lectures for 1891).
TIlE BODY OF CHRIST.
DISSERTATIONS ON SUBJECTS CONNECTED
WITH THE INCARNATION.
rtHE NEW TII.EOLOGY AND T
OLD
RELIGION.
THE MISSION OF THE CHURCH.
ORDERS AND
UNITY.
SPIRITUAL EFFICIENCY.
THE PERMANENT CREED AND THE
CHRISTIAN IDEA OP SIN.
THE QUESTION OP DIVORCE.
Edited by
LUX MUNDI. A series of Studies in the Religion
of the Incarnation. By Varlous:;Writers.

THE RECONSTRUCTION OF BEI
IEF

BELIEF IN

GOD

-
D
.

It,

BY CHARLES GORE, D
ID.
!)
liON. D.D. EDIN. AND DURHAM, HON. D.O.L. OXFORD, RON. LL.D. CAMBRIDGE
AND BIRMDWHAM, RON. FELLOW OF TRINITY COLLEGE, OXFORD,
FORMERLY BISHOP OF OXFORD

9 9

LONDON
JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET, W.
1921

L!' .
RY T. AiARY'S COLLEGE

FmST EDITION
Reþl'i nted
Reprinted
Reprinted

NOfJember 1921
November 1921
December 1921
December 1921

"L..

Dl,CJ

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

I .
.

PREFACE

1. Homme propose: Dieu dispose. But anY'vay I
propose to issue an ordered and reasoned statement
of my faith as a Christian, as far as may be without
assumptions, or, as I call it, a "Reconstruction of
Belief," in three volwnes, of which this is the first,
dealing respectively with Belief in God, Belief in
Jesus Christ, and Belief in the Holy Spirit and in the
Church. There will be no reference to ecclesiastical
authority in the two first volwnes, but it will be seri-
ously considered in the last. If the critics take notice
of me and argue against my conclusions, I propose
to issue a fourth supplementary volume of disserta-
tions and discussions, in order to expand, buttress,
or modify arguments or conclusions.
I endeavour to appeal to the ordinary educated
reader. If any such finds the book stiff, I think he
,vould be assisted by reading first the analysis of the
argument which begins the last chapter, pp. 288-8.
2. My argument is positive. . It is a statement of
the reasons which seem to me convincing on behalf
of a certain type of belief. I t is not concerned, except
incidentally, in describing, or arguing against, rival
beliefs. Thus I offer no survey of the rival beliefs of
current philosophers, such as is offered by Mr. W. R.
Matthe,vs in his admirable Studies in Christian
i:x

x

PREFACE

Philosophy (l\Iacmillan, 1921), but I hope I have
indicated sufficiently both ,vhere I rely upon them
and where they do not satisfy me.
l\ly statement is also individual. It presents the
arguments which finally, after long thinking, have
seemed to satisfy my o,vn mind. But I confess that
the form of ordered argument, starting ,vithout pre-
suppositions and proceeding from point to point,
does not represent the way in ,vhich my convictions
have been actually reached. I am conscious of certain
strong predispositions towards certain belicfs, which
seem to be inherent in me, and I ,vill venture to be so
far autobiographical as to enumerate them, so far as
they are relevant.
(a) I have, ever since I ,vas an wldergraduate, been
certain that I must be in the true sense a free thinker,
and that either not to think freely about a disturbing
subject, or to accept ecclesiastical authority in place
of the best judgement of my own reason, ,vould be for
me an impossible treason against the light. I must
go remorselessly where the argument leads me. Thus
when in the early seventies I was preparing for
ordination, and Ewald had seriously convinced me
that the old-fashioned view of the Old Testament was
impossible to hold, it never presented itself to nle
as possible that I could substitute the traditional
view in place of the scientific in my own mind on the
ground of authority or agree to teach it. There was
nothing for it but to make what seemed to me fairly
certain as evident as possible to rny examiners for
orders, and also to show how reconcilable I thought
it with the Creeds. But at the same time a cordial
agreement with Ruskin against the dorninant Political

PREFACE

xi

Econoll1ists, and other causes, prevented my ever
confusing my duty to reason with any attribution of
infallibility to the intellectuals of the day.
(b) I have always felt deeply, being by disposition
pessill1istic, the argull1ents against the love of God.
I have always thought that the only very difficult
dogma of the Church was the dogma that God is Love.
But deeper than any difficulty has been the feeling
that at the roots of ll1Y being I am confronted with
God, froll1 whonl I cannot get away, and that the God
who confronts me there is the Living God of the
prophets and of Jesus Christ. Equally deep was
the feeling that the Christian life was certainly" the
Way," and that it ,vas foolish to suppose that it could
flourish except on its own intellectual roots and in
its own proper men tal soil. Also I have never been
able to feel that any of the various hUl11anitarian
estill1ates of Christ was in any degree satisfying.
(c) Finally, though this has no bearing on the
present volume or its next projected successor, I
have since my childhood been what I may call a
Catholic by mental constitution. I remell1ber very
well, when I was eight or nine-sixty years ago-
reading a book by a Protestant author-a Presby-
terian, I think-entitled Father Clement, about the
conversion of a Catholic priest to Protestantism. I
have never read it since. I had been brought up in
ordinary old-fashioned English Church ways. I had
only attended very Low Church services. I had
never heard of the Oxford movement. I knew
nothing about Catholicism, except as a strange
superstition, called Popery. But the book described
confession and absolution, fasting, the Real Presence,

xii

PREF.ACE

the devotion of the Three Hours, the use of incense,
etc., and I felt instinctively and at once that
this sort of sacramental religion ,vas the religion
for n1e. From that day most of the people ,vho
influenced my intellect, 'v hen I ,vas YOllilg, ,vere
agnostics or Protestants or "outsiders" to the
Catholic faith-Carlyle, Ruskin, Ed,vard Bo,ven,
T. H. Green-but this predisposition remRined quite
Wlaltered. l\Iy mental life has consisted in the
process of confronting such predispositions ,vith the
results, so far as I have been able to s
e them, of
philosophy and science and criticism (,vith a native
tendency ahvays to anticipate the worst),
d to
seek ß unity or synthesis in ,vhich all the light I could
get ,,"ould be allo,ved its full force, ,,
ithout my inner-
most self being quenched or blinded. """hat I am
daring to present to the public is the result of this
sort of process, continued over forty and lnore years.
3. Like others, as I view the world and the Church-
especially the Church of England-at the present day,
I cannot feel hopeful about the immediate prospect.
The prophets and experience alike convince me that
there can be no real social recovery except through
ß general return to God. And of such a return I see
no signs. God has smitten; but in general "pc have
not sough' Him. Thus, taught by the prophets, I
am ready to anticipate scathing judgement&. But the
prophets also teach us to hold with wlquenchable
faith to the divine purpose of progress, through all
the catastrophes and judgements ,vhich widespread
apostasy from God brings with it. The purpose
remains, and the end is sure. No right effort is going
to be lost. And the instrument through which God

PREFACE

xiii

works is the "faitlûul remnant" of those who
believe HÏ1n and obey Him at all costs. Of such, I
feel persuaded, there is among us as large a body,
and as genuine, as at Wly previous period of history.
What is needful for them is to think out their prin-
ciples, individually and collectively: so that they shall
know what they believe and why they believe. And
these volumes, ,vhich I offer to God with a prayer for
His blessing, are intended to help them in the task.
CHARLES GORE.

M ichaelmaa 1921.

..

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I

THE BREAKDOWN OF TRADITION ·

PAGE
1

CHAPTER II

THE CONDITIONS OF HOPEFUL RECONSTRUCTION 29

CHAPTER III
GROUNDS OF BELIEF IN GOD

45

CHAPTER 1\1
THE QUESTION OF REVELATION

74

CHAPTER V
THE CONTENTS OF THE PROPHETIC FAITH 110

CHAPTER \11
IlEVELATION AND REASON

133

xv

xvi

CONTENTS

CHAPTER VII

THE HISTORICAL RELIGION .

PAGB
171

CHAPTER VIII

.
THE IIISTORICAL 'VORTH OF TIlE NEW TESTA-
1tlENT

184

CHAPTER IX

THE PREJUDICE OF CRITICISM

215

CHAPTER X

TIlE PREJUDICE EXA:\IINED .

230

CHAPTER XI

TIlE IIISTORICAL EVIDENCE .

252

CIIArTER XII

CONCLUSION

283

TABLE OF SUBJECTS

295

INDEX OF NA
IES .

. 299

BELIEF IN GOD

CHAPTER I

TIlE BREAKDOWN OF TRADITION

THE world in which we live to-day can only be
described as chaotic in the matter of religious beliefs.
Of course there are very many persons whom lack
of seriousness or lack of education renders indifferent
to religious problems. And there are some intelligent
and serious people 'v ho more or less deliberately and
successfully seclude themselves from the strife of
tongues and live unmoved in the light of their own
religious traditions; and others again who, in despair
of attaining the religious peace which they need by
any other means, take refuge under the shelter of
some religious authority which admits of no question-
ing, ,vhether it be the Roman Catholic Church or
Christian Science. But wherever men and women
are to be found who care about religion and feel its
value, and who at the same time feel bOWld, as they
say, " to think for themselves," there we are apt to
discover the prevailing note-not the only note, but
the prevailing note-to be that of uncertainty and
even bewilderment, coupled very often with a feeling
of resentment against the Church or against organized
religion on account of ,vhat is called its" failure."
Now, there are no doubt some speculative or curious
people who find the sceptical temper with its attendant
2 1

2 'fHE BREAI{DO'VN OF TRADrrlON
uncertainties tolerable or even enjoyable enough.
They are content to "spend their tinle in nothing
else but either to tell or to hear some ne,v thing."
It is enough for thenl that cach ne"\v view is " interest-
ing "; they pass their life "ever learning and never
coming to the knowledge of the truth." But it is
not so with most' men. The feeling of hopeless
uncertainty breeds in thcln a distaste for positive
creeds, and they drift a ,va y from religion altogether.
But it is ignoble tu acquiesce in this sort of scepti-
cism without at least a serious effort. It is my bclicf
that a great deal of scepticism is due, not really to the
absence of adequate grounds for conviction, but to
confusion of mind, to an excessive deference to current
intellectual fashions, and to the fact that a man
has never thoroughly and systematicaJIy faced the
problems. It seems to me that the right course for
anyone who cannot accept the mere voice of authority,
but feels the imperative obligation to "face the
arguments" and to think freely, is to begin at the
beginning and to see how far he can reconstruct his
religious beliefs stage by stage on a secure foundation,
as far as possible without any preliminary assumptions
and with a rcsolute determination "to know the
worst." This at least is the only course ,vhich the
present writer has found himself able either to
adopt in his own case or to recomnlend to others in
a like case. It means of course an equally frank
cross-questioning of traditional religious beliefs and
of the current dogmas of the contemporary intellectual
world. This is too often forgotten. There is a very
large number of people who reject traditional religious
authority with contempt, and go on even naïvely
to accept, without any serious questioning, the oracles
of the day.

NEED OF RECONSTRUCTION 3
But this is Inanifestly foolish. If we refuse to be
irightened by one kind of authority, ,ve must not be
frightened by another. Ne\v vie,vs have frequently
proved at least as misleading as old traditions.! The
only satisfactory way for a man to save his own soul,
or to become capable of helping others, is freely to use
his own real judgement and accept the responsibility
of decision in the fullest light that he can conle by.
Deliberately to enter upon this process of recon-
struction from the beginning does not, of course,
mean the abandonment during the process of the
religious beliefs and practices which a man holds
, already in use. Quite the contrary. He will make
the most of the precious gift of faith, even while he is
enquiring into its basis. It is part of the experience
which he is to interpret. It gives him his under-
standing of the questions at issue. l\loreover, though
the process of reconstruction will be more or less
different in the case of each person, according as the
intellectual equipment and opportunity of individuals
are different, yet it is arrd ought to be possible for all
who have to face life for themselves and use their
powers of thought. All that is really essential is
sincerity and the readiness to make the necessary
effort of mind. I And it is the aÎ1n of this volume to
help especially the ordinary educated man and woman.
But I would add that there is no class for 'Vh01l1

1 See additional note at end of the chapter.

See Bernard Bosanquet, What Religion 18 C\Iacmillan, 1920),
p. viii. '" As a little child . . .'; that has been the motto, as of
the saints, so of the wisest among mankind. Your mind is a
good instrument; only keep it free and sincere; keep away from
selfishness, self-conceit, from the vanity of learning, and from the
vanity of resentment against learning. Open it to experience, and
take that as largely as you can. 'Ve know the type of man who
on the whole gets nearest to truth. It is not the cleverest. It is, I
think, the sincerest."

4 THE BREAKDO'\TN OF TRADITION
this process of fundaillental reconstruction of their
religious beliefs is so necessary as for those who are,
or are preparing to become, ministers of the Christi:tn
Church. They are often enthusiasts for religion, who
have no personal doubts, but are eagerly interested
in a great many questions, doctrinal and ceremonial
and social; and their temptation is to take up the
questions that interest them, ,,"hich are secondary and
derivative, and not rcally to study and test their
foundations. Very Iikely they ,vill themselves
experience reactions and fall into fundamental doubts
later in life. Certainly, if they are to be true to their
high vocation, they will be constantly occupied in
helping others who are in doubt. In either case they
,vill find themselves paralysed if they have never
explored their foundations. It is only those ,vho
kno,v, from the ground upwards, what they believe
and ,vhy they believe, ,vho can help either themselves
or others in the time of stress. It is only those who
are felt to have a real ground for their beliefs and a
rcal sympathy with free enquiry whose help will be
sought by those who need it. And It is pitiful to see
ho,v many there are among the professed ministers of
Christ who, in an hour of popular discussion of some
vital truth, are proved, by their perplexity and
dismay, or by their uninstructed denmlciations, never
to have thought at all seriously or deeply about the
most momentous questions.
It is, then, the aim of this book to rehearse the
process of reconstruction ,vhich has been slowly and
laboriously and again and again enacted in the writer's
own soul and mind, with as single an eye for the
truth-from whatever source, new or old, it may
come-as he has been able to win for himself. But
before making a beginning it is necessary to examine

THE OLD ORTIIODOXY

5

the existing situation in order that we may understand
what are the causes of the profound unsettlement of
religious beliefs in our present society. Such an
analysis must precede reconstruction by enabling us
to interpret aright the breadth and the profundity of
the gulf which has to be filled.

It may be said with substantial truth that in the
earlier part of the nineteenth century, ho,vever much
scepticism existed in special intellectual circles-and
there ,vas a great deal of it-yet on the ,vhole popular
religion in England, for all its divisions, had a sub-
stantial basis of agreenlent, a comnlon doctrine 'v hich
was accepted as a matter of course; and this accepted
religion, intellectually considered, had t\VO nlain
pillars of support. For its "Natural Religion," or
belief in God, the "argument from design" was the
sufficient foundation, and that in the form given it by
the established scientific doctrine of the fixity of
species, or "special creations." This "ras trium-
phantly used as against all atheists. "Can you look
at the different orders and species which nature
presents to you, each elaborately designed to fulfil
certain functions, and each fixed, as science tells us,
in its essential characteristics from the beginning, and
doubt that they must have been created for the pur-
poses which they fulfil by a designing mind-the
almighty Creator of the univers
?" This ,vas the
argument of Paley's brilliant hook on Natural
Theology. Then for Revealed Religion-Christianity
-the pillar of support ,vas the authority of IIoly
Scripture, considered not merely as containing the
record of the ,vord of God, but as being in all its parts
the word of God, and therefore in aU its affirmations
on all subjects of infallible authority. Though the

6 TIlE BREA.I{DO'VN OF TRADITION
teaching of the leaders of the Reformation in Germany
about the authority of the Bible had been in some
cases much more discriminating, 1 yet in England, at
any rate, after the ,veakening of the authority of the
Church at the Reforlnation, the accepted appeal had
come to be simply to the infallible book. "The Bible
and the Bible only" was" the religion" of Protestant
Englishmen.
Now it is not too much to say that, in their existing
forms, both those great supports of popular religion
,vere destroyed in the estimation both of men of
science and of the mass of educated people in the
middle of the last century. We will take first the
argument from design.
1. The fixity of species from the beginning of creation
might seem to be naturally deducible from the story
of the creation in Genesis, taken literally, as for
example it is presented by l\lilton in Paradise Lost.
But as a matter of fact the idea appears first not in
Christian fathers or schoolmen, but as a scientific
conclusion of the seventeenth century I-a conclusion
drawn especially from the limits ,vithin which inter-
breeding is possible. Francis Bacon plainly knows
nothing of it. It is to be found first, I believe, in the
writings of John Ray (1628-1705), who is called" the
founder of modern zoology"; it ,vas affirmed by
Linnaeus in his Philosophia Botanica (1751) as a sort
of dogma: "There are as many different species as
the Infinite Being originally created different forms."1

1 See T. M. Lindsay's Hist. oj the Reformation (Clark, 1907), vol. i,
pp. 453 fi.
2 See Aubrey l\Ioore, Science and the Faith (Kegan Paul, 1889),
p. 173.
8 He suggests elsewhere, however, an extension of view according
to which all the different specie8 of a genu8 were originally one
8pecies.

SPECIAL CREATIONS

7

In spite of occasional doubts or protests or positive
theories of evolution expressed by Buffon, Goethe,
Erasmus Darwin, Treviranus, and Lamarck, this
doctrine held the field in the scientific ,vorld, till.
Charles Darwin and \Vallace destroyed it. It was
then not primarily a theological, but a scientific
doctrine, based on observation, no doubt incomplete;
and when Darwin speaks of its being "like confessing
a murder" 1 to confess to the opinion that species are
not immutable, the soUd body of hostile opinion that
he is thinking of is not that of the theologians, but of
the scientific ,vorld. 1 But this scientific doctrine had
naturall y been made use of in the interests of " natural
religion," and made the basis of the argument from
design. It was an argument (as it appears in Paley)
compact, intelligible, and incontrovertible. "Each
of these kinds of plants and animals is obviously
designed to fulfil its functions. Science on its own
ground teaches you that each kind (i.e. each group of
living things which are fertile inteT se) has been sub.

1 Life, ii, 23.
2 In Paley's Natural Theology, chap. v (Works, vol. iv, p. 50).
The theory of the appearance of design in nature being due to
"natural selection" (as Darwin afterwards called it) acting upon
the profusion of nature, which produces every kind of variation and
every conceivable form-eliminating tho
e forms which "by the
defect of their constitution [were] incapable of preservation and of
continuance by generation" and suffering only the fit to survive-
is considered by Paley and rather contemptuously rejected. The
theory was, in fact, first given reasonable consistency and plausibility
by Darwin. Darwin himself denies thät before he published his
Origin of Species" the subject was in tha air" or "that men's
minds were prepared for it." In his intercourse with naturalists
he says he " never happened to come across ß single one who seemed
to doubt about the permanence of species" (Life, i, 87). It is not
necessary, however, here to review the controversy raised by
Samuel Butler and renewed by Bernard Shaw as to the precise
nature of the achievement of Darwin in the history of the doctrine
of evolution.

8 THE BREAlillOWN OJ..' TRADITION
stantially ,vhat it is, apart from superficial variations,
from the beginning. You cannot reasonably doubt,
therefore, that it was created by an original designer,
the author and maker of all that is." 1 But in this
form Dar,vln-it is not too much to say-seenled com-
pletely to overthrow the argument from design.
Nature was no,vpresented under a new aspect. Granted
force and matter and la,v, including living matter, with
its constant tendency to variation in aU sorts of direc-
tions, and the whole ,vorld, ,vith all its infinite forms,
appeared as having through countless ages grown
of itself, or automatically. The exact specific form
of each kind of plant and animal ,vas now repre-
sented as being due, not to the Creator having origin-
ally so made it, but to the fact that, among the
infinite varieties of forms ,vhich the profusion of
nature poured forth, one form at each stage proved
itself the best adapted to survive, and in the struggle
for existence-which is due to nature producing at
each moment far more specimens of each kind than
can survive-natural selection had cleared the spaces
of nature by killing off all the" innumerable specimens
less suited to survive, and leaving the field to the
one ,vhich had the best survival value. The appear-
ance of design is thus due, not to any original creative
act, but to the fact that out of innumerable hosts of
things produced those only survived the struggle and
successfully propagated their kind which were the
best adapted to their surroundings. Of course, in
the pages of Darwin the doctrine is stated ,vith
cautions and reservations and limitations which

1 Kant's famous criticism of the argument from design hardly
touched its popular use. Moreover, his chief concern is to show that
the argument, if valid, would prove only a designer of great power
and wisdom, not an absolute creator, almighty and all-wise.

CIIARLES DARVVIN 9
" popular science" ignored. It is also the case that
Dar,vin's positions and suggestions have not in all cases
proved scientifically acceptable. But ,vhat ,ve are now
concerned ,vith is only the original effect on the popular
imagination of Dar,vin's theory. Thcre it presented
itself as a doctrine of nature making itself -a process
,vhich, granted the initial materials and laws,l seemed
to explain itself ,vithout requiring any God to design
it or " make it up." l\Ian, moreover, appeared as, in
his physical structure, only one form of animal life,
perfected in the struggle for existence, especially in
virtue of pre-eminent mental qualities, which yet (it
was suggested) were only developments of the mental
qualitics ,vhich had progressively appeared in the
animal ,vorld generally. And instead of a being
created perfect, in the full glory of intellectual and
moral po,ver, as l\lilton and South, interpreting or
ITlisinterpreting the Bible, had represented him, ,vho
fell from his first glory and only after long ages could
be restored to it by a divine act of redemption-
man no,v appeared as starting from the lo,vest depth
an10ng the anthropoid apes, and only slowly climbing
up from among his animal ancestry, by his own
efforts through long ages, to a dignity such as he now
enjoys. So the acceptance of Darwinism seemed in
the popular imagination to destroy not only the
argument from design, in its shortest and most
1 All the Darwinians agreed with Clifford that Ie of the beginning
of the universe we know nothing at ali." There is in Adolpha
Retté's account of his conversion to Catholicism, Du diable à Dieu,
an amusing account of how, in his agnostic days, his intellectual
conscience was scandalized by the joy ('xpressed by some working
rflen, after listening to a lecture of his, that nowadays science was
able to explain the origin of things without the doctrines of religion
or the assistance of priests. This, he uneasily felt, was precisely
what science cannot do. I t is concerned with process, not origin.
I am trusting to my memory for the reference.

10 TIlE BREAI{DO\VN OF 'fRADITION
effective form, but also the Bible doctrine of the origin
of man and of his fall, ,vhich, in its turn, lay at the
root of Christianity.
Very Jikely if the Darwinian doctrine of develop..
ment had been formulated much earlier-let us say
in the fourth century, in the atmosph
re generated
by Greek philosophical Christianity-it would have
produced no such shock. The idea that the early
chapters of Genesis are "allegory" and not history
had been widely held hI the early Church, and not
only in the Alexandrian school. Augustine himself,
as is well kno,vn, follo,ving St. Gregory of Nyssa, had
propounded the view that God in the beginning
created only germs or causes of the forms of life,
\vhich were afterwards to be developed in gradual
course. l And it had been repeatedly asserted by the
leaders of the Church that the first man ,vas not
created perfect-for it is God's method to do things
gradually-but only in a fit state to advance to,vards
perfection. 1 Accommodation, then, bet,veen the
points of vie,v of science and religion would probably
have been much easier then than it was in the nine-
teenth century. But it is in the nineteenth century
and not in the fourth that ,ve are now interested.
We are not yet concerned with balancing and
estimating evidences and probabilities, or with dis-
tinguishing what ,vas the real religious outcome of
the new science from its popular effect, or what was
essential Christianity from its current form. We are
simply concerned to estimate the shock to the
religious imagination which the speedy and world-

1 Aug. de Gen. ad lit, v, 5 and 23, and St. Gregory of Nyssa in
Hexaem, P.G. xliv, 72, etc.
2 See Lux Mundi, p. 393, n. 2 j also that man from his creation
was naturally mortal or subject to death, p. 395.

TIlE BLO'VS O.F SCIENCE

11

,vide acceptance of Dar,vin's conclusions, with what-
ever modifications, inevitably produced.
And this, it must be noticed, ,vas only the last of
many shocks. 'Vhen l\lilton wrote his Paradise Lost,
he could still-though with hesitation-present the
old and comfortable view of the universe which made
this world the centre of the whole system of creation.
I call it comfortable, because it made mankind so
obviously the central object in the divine purpose.
In a few days the universe had been prepared by God
for the dwelling-place of man, with the world, his
home, as its centre, and the sun and the moon to give
him light, and the stars to give glory to his sky and
perhaps to portray his destiny; and man had been
introduced in perfection and glory into his dwelling..
place, to be its earthly sovereign, all within the space
of a few days a few thousand years ago. But science
had aimed a series of blows at this comfortable and
compact scheme. Astronomy first had shattered the
geocentric theory, by disclosing the world as only a
minor planet revolving round its central sun, while
our whole solar system ,vas only one of innumerable
systems which stretch through infinite space . . . till
the brain reels beneath the attempt to realize them;
and, on this showing, man and his dwelling become
a mere speck in an uninlaginable infinitude of
systems. And geology had taken up the tale where
astronomy left it, and rolled o11.t its almost infinite
ages while the world was in making, till man, a speck
in space, became no more than a moment in time.
And now, once again, biology, taking up the tale from
astronomy and geology, seemed to make mankind
only one phase <,vhy more than a passing phase 1)
in the evolution of life-a bubble, as it were, on the
changing, flowing river. The effect of all those

12 TIlE BREAI{DO\VN OF TRADITION
disclosures upon the religious imagination can hardly
be exaggcrated. They seemed, as represented in
popular literature, ahnost to obliterate God behind a
self-developing universe, and to reduce the position
of man to insignificance, and to contradict all that
vie,v of his history which the Dible had enforccd or
suggested.
And before ,ve lcave this particular "shock to
religion," it must not be overlooked that the imagina-
tion of each age is affected chiefly by the most
successful and progressive form of intellectual work
current at the time. The leading representatives of
effective intellect in earlier ages had becn philosophers
or theologians or poets or artists. Now, beyond all
question, the popular representatives of effective
intelligence were the scientific n1en and the practical
men who were using science to develop the resources
of civilization. And the age- I speak of the Victorian
age - ,vas optimistic. Science and " secular"
education ,vere to be the instruments of unlimited
progress and universal peace. Nothing was needed
but to educate men and make them free to compete.
Then universal competition ,vould bring the best to
the front, and mankind would go ahead to a glorious
future. The universe was the scene of ,vhat appeared
to be regarded as a necessary law of progress, of which
science was the chief mini
ter and instrument.
Darwin and Huxley might shake their heads and
declare that science could utter no optimistic pro-
phesies. But the spirit of the age was not to be
quenched by their ,varnings. And ,vithin a restricted
region science responded lnagnificently to the task
assigned to her. l\Iaterial progress, of a kind, ,vas
manifest in all directions. No wonder the popular
imagination worshipped "science" and "progress,"

HISTORICAL CRITICISl\1 13
and discarded the old-fashioned arguments for
religion, and was disposed to take reprisals on the
Church as an enfeebled tyrant which has unsuccess-
fully set itself to resist each advance of scientific
discovery, and which ,vas, moreover, discredited by
its manifest abuses, so repellent to the Liberal
spirit. No ,vonder materialism or agnosticism pre-
vailed, and Herbert Spencer bccanle the prophet of
enlightenment. 1
2. And contemporaneously ,vith the great scientific
movement, of which Darwin is the central figure,
there emerged ,vithin the horizon of the religious
world, ,vhich had been building its spiritual fabric
upon the infallibility of Scripture, the startling con-
clusions of literary and historical criticism. To an
extent that ,ve do not to-day easily realize, this was
a new science I; and it was a real science 'v hich ,vas
to open out vast regions of human kno,vledge,
especially of the earlier stages of civilization. It had

1 For the present scientific position of the theory of evolution,
nfter eeventy year
of criticism, see the excellent sketch of J. A.
Thomson and P. Geddes, Evolution (Home University Library:
\Villiams & N orgate); and for human origin!!, see Prof. 'V ood Jones,
The Problem of Man's Ancestry (S.P.C.K.). For an estimate of the
real spiritual effect of the newer biological theories, reference may
still be made to Aubrey Moore's Science and the Faith, as well as to
a multitude of more recent books. But to such considerations we
ehall have to return when we are occupied in reconstruction.
2 See Gooch'e History and H Ï8torians in the XIXth Oentury
(Longmans), pp. 10 fI. I think it is really suggestive to notice
Samuel Johnson's estimate of history and historians as reported by
Boswell. "Great abilities," he said, "are not requisite for an
historian; for in historical composition all the greatest powers of
the human mind are quiescent. He has facts ready to his hand;
80 that there is no exercise of invention. Imagination is not
required in any high degree; only about as much as is used in the
lower kinds of poetry. Some penetration, accuracy, and colouring
will fit a man for the task, if he can give the application which is
nece!sary" lsee under thEl year 1763 in Boswell's Life, chap. vii).

14 'TI-IE llllEAlmO\VN OF TRADITION
applied itself in the person of \V olf to sho\v that
IIolner's epics ,vere not the \vork of one man at one
time, but the slo\vly gro,ving product of a "hole
epoch, ho\vever great the genius of the lllan or IHen
who fixed the tradition in its final form. And it had
applied itself in the person of Niebuhr to the history
of Itonle. In that region it had traced the emergence
of history, as a trust,vorthy record of the facts as
they occurred, out of the mythical stories and
traditional lore 'v hich lie behind history; 'v hich in
varying degrees contain historical material of a
very important kind, but \vhich are certainly not
historical in the forin in \v hich they \vere handed
do\vn.
This sanlC critical science then applied itself to the
Bible records. 'rhus De 'Vette (1780-1843) and
E\vald (1803-1875) and their successors led btudents
to perceive that in the early chapters of Genesis what
we are dealing ,vith is not an historical record of
human origins, revealed by God and accurately
handed do,vn from father to son in human tradition.
What supplied the lnatcrial of these early stories
were the first efforts of the hunlan inlagination seek-
ing, \vithout nlaterials to ,york upon, to construct a
picture of the origins of the ,vorld and of man, and
of sin and suffering and death. Sinlilar stories of the
Creation and the Flood existed, it appeared, among the
Babylonians. No doubt what was characteristic of
the He brc\v narrative ,vas its astonishing dignity and
purity of spiritual truth. That certainly suggested
divine inspiration; but its subject-matter ,vas the
early product of the hUlnan imagination " 11laking up
a picture" of hUlllan origins. It ,vas not history-
neither the story of Creation, nor of the Fall, nor of
the Flood, nor of the Tower of Babel; moreover,

CRITICIs
r OF THE BIBLE

15

there 'v ere easily to be detected different and incom-
patible narratives of the Creation and the Flood
intcl\voven in our present Book of Genesis.
Later, it appeared, ,ve had to do ,vith tradition in
whi.ch the names of races akin to Israel appeared as
individuals, and their mutual qualities and relations
,vere reflected back into the histories of their supposed
founders. Gradually froln traditional history we get
out upon the solid ground of real chronicle. It is the
task of criticisnl to discriminate the character of the
different portions of the Bible, ,vhcther they be like
the legends of the Arthurian cycle, or like the legend
of Charlelnagne-a legend woven round a solidly
historical person--or like the tradition of a saint
among his monastic brethren, or the precise chronicle.
One special feature of ancient literature is the
tendency to hcap upon great founders all the gradually
successive outc0111eS of their foundation. Thus the
various codifications of the La,v of Israel were
traditionally ascribed to the first fOllider of their
polity, l\loses. But l\Ioses certainly did not ,vrite the
Pentateuch, nor did he do all that is there ascribed
to him. Again, the Psalms as a whole were ascribed
to David, but only a very small portion of them can
have been actually of his authorship. Once more,
a great unkno,vn prophet at the end of the Captivity
carried on the ,york of Isaiah in a ne,v moment of
history, and his work is incorporated ,vith Isaiah's
and called by his name.
l\loreover, even in later times, the function of history
is not strictly distinguished from that of edification.
'l'hus the books of Chronicles were history written
not as it was, but as in the judgement of the scribe it
ought to have been and must have been. And
stories ,vith a moral, not strictly historical, like the

16 TIlE BREAImOWN OF TRADITION
narrative part of Daniel or the story of Esther, appear
also alnong the sacred books.
Apart frOlU questions of detail, or of more or less,
all this account of the IIebrcw literature appeared to
be very convincing in the light of what ,ve know of
human history everywhere. It rapiùly converted the
scholars; but it was very revolutionary. And it
presented itself to the ordinary man as the discovery
that the Bible is not true-woman was not really
made of a rib taken from the side of man; the Garùen
of Eden ,vas a myth; mankind was not saved fronl a
universal deluge in the persons of Noah's family in an
ark; the To,ver of Babel was not a true account of the
origin of languages; many things written in the Bible
did not actually happen-could not indeed have hap..
pened as is described: the Bible had been proved not
to be true. All this was very crude. People did not
ask themselves ,vhether poetry and drama and legend
and myth have not in other nations proved to be
as potent vehicles of truth as historical fact. But ,ve,
in England especially, are a prosaic and unhnaginative
people. The credit of the Bible and with it the
credit of religion ,vas fundamentally shaken.
Meanwhile David Strauss had, in the most radical
spirit, and with the most virulent animus against
" priests" and churches, applied the mythical theory
to the Gospels in his famous Life of Christ (1888) ; and
shortly after the publication of Darwin's Origin of
Species, Renan (1863) published his much more
attractive, but hardly less destructive, Life of Jesus.
And Ferdinand Baur, the contemporary of Strauss
bet,veen 1831 and 1860, elaborated the deeply de-
structive view of the New Testalnent literature which,
as developed by "the school of Tübingen," became
the main subject of intellectual controversy in

COl\IPARATIVE RELIGION 17
theological circles for many years. But it is notice-
able that in England certainly the work of Strauss and
Renan never produced as much effect on the popular
imagination as the criticism of the Old Testament.
This ,vas no doubt partly due to the fact that our great
English scholars appeared to win a decisive victory
over the destructive critics of the New Testament,
whose theories they seemed to sho,v to be uncritical
and Wlconvincing. But whatever the cause, it is
,vorth noticing that though the traditional vie,v of
the Old Testament and of the New was subject at
the same tinle to attacks equally thorough, equally
brilliant, and equally radical, it ,vas mainly on the
field of the Old Testament that the credit of the
Bible suffered in popular imagination. The Old
Testament had been the stronghold of Puritan religion.
It was there especially that the Bible was supposed
to have been proved to be untrue. It is only recently
that" Modernist" views of the New Testanlent have
come to dominate popular and journalistic literature,
and have given us the kind of view of Christian
origins which may be seen in Mr . Wells's Outline oj
History.
8. To these t,vo great shocks to established religious
beliefs must be added a third-less destructive, no
doubt, but still seriously imperilling the popular vie,v
of divine revelation. I refer to the rise of the science
of Comparative Religion. The cause of the evangeliza-
tion of the heathen had not been a popular cause in
the early nineteenth century, except in the circle of
the strict Evangelicals. The popular distaste for it is
expressed, in ways we are familiar with, by Thackeray
and Dickens. But when it told how" the heathen in
their blindness bow down to wood and stone," it
expressed the current view of the non-Christian
8

18 THE BREAKDO'VN OF TRADITION
religions. No doubt Judai'3m and l\lohamlnedanism
stood on a different basis, though Judaism had
decisively lllissed its way and l\lohammed ,vas dis-
tinctively the False Prophet. But for the rest the
religions of heathenism ,vere supposed to be rationally
beneath contempt. l\Iacaulay, though he was very
far from being an evangelical Christian, expressed
,vith his usual force the common contemptuous
estimate alike of the philosophy and the religions of
India. But a quite dillerent attitude of lnind ,vas
represented by the ne"\v science of Comparative Re-
ligions, of ,vhich l\Iax 1\Iüller was in England the most
prolninent representative. They ,vere now studied as
examples of the various forms which had been taken
in different races by the fundamental instinct of religion
in man. Behind their grosser popular forlllS Hinduism,
Buddhism, Confucianism, and even the religion
of savages became the subject of a respectful study,
resulting son1etimes in a positive enthusiasm for
what had formerly seemed a repulsive superstition.
Again I say, it is not n1Y present business to seek to
estimate the exact truth of the newer views now
dominant. I only note the change and the effect of
the change on the comlnon belief in Revealed Religion.
Though in fact the attitude of Britons in India and
Mrica, ,vhether Government officials or traders,
towards the natives and their religions remained very
much as it ,vas and very far belo,v ,vhat ,vas to be
desired in the way of sympathy, 1 the ,vorld of educated
people at home began to profess an even profound
respect for the non-Christian faiths. It was agreed
that religion ,vas a universal need and characteristic

1 I ought, I think, to except :Moha.mmedanism. The Mohammedan
religion has apparently always obtained the instinctive sympathy
of Englishmen.

REVOLT AGAINST CALVINISl\I 19
of Inan, and that it had taken various forms according
to the psychologies of various races and to their vary-
ing levels of culture. All religions, it \vould appear,
,vere more or less inspired by the spirit of truth and
nlore or less involved in error. The conclusion
commonly suggested ,vas that the distinctive and
absolute claim made for the religion of the Bible
,vould need to be very much toned down; and that,
if there were to be a universal religion for our day or
for the future, it must be one ,vhich would negate the
exclusive claim of anyone historical creed, but in
,vhich all alike could, in their real spirit, find them-
selves at home. "Religion," it has been recently
said, "lives through the death of religions." 1 Thus
the claim of the historical Christian creed to be the
one divinely authorized religion ,,,,hich ,vas to convert
the \vorld-being as light to darkness and kno\vledge
to ignorance-came to be regarded as an old-fashioned
claim which educated people could treat with
contelnpt.
4. The shocks to established beliefs ,vhich I have
been enumerating arose from new discoveries or ne\v
sciences. But hardly less important among the
causes of religious unsettlement was the revolt of the
moral conscience-which in the middle of the last
century, if it was singularly insensitive on some
points, as for instance on the cruelties and injustices
still involved in our industrial sy
tem, was acutely
sensitive and insistent on others-against certain
current doctrines of Christianity ,vhich are commonly,
if not quite accurately, described as Calvinistic. The
idea of absolute divine decrees condemning to eternal
misery masses of men even before their birth-the

1 Kirsopp Lake's Landma.rk8 oj Early Christianity (l\Iacmillan.
1920), p. 1.

20 THE BREAKDO"
OF TR.
DITION
teaching about the Atonenlent ,vhich represented
God as content to punish the innocent in place of the
guilty-the doctrine of an endless hell ,vhich ,vas to
be the lot of all 'v ho had not accepted a message 'v hich
some of them had not even heard-such doctrines,
which had no doubt been conlIDonly preached from
Christian pulpits for a long period, more or less
suddenly began to produce a violent reaction. John
Stuart l\lill's famous protest, "I ,vill call no being
good, who is not ,vhat I mean ,vhen I apply that
epithet to my fello\v-creaturcs, and if such a being
can sentence me to hell for not so calling hiln, to hell
I will go," 1 represented a very ,videspread rebellion
of conscience against everything in the current
religious tradition 'v hich described the action of
God as tyrannical, arbitrary and cruel. Of course
it ,vas largely an uninstructed protest. It did not
recognize ho\v much in the real Christian tradition
was wholly on its side.. Of course also it was an
unbalanced protest, and ran to foolish excesses, so that
it became fashionable to represent God as if He \vere
a merely good-natured being, and the n10ral law had
no severity and no eternal and necessary sanction.
Nevertheless it must be recognized that the current
tradition of orthodox Protestantism had offended,
at certain points even violently, the real conscience
of men, and the revolt of outraged conscience rein..
forced the rebellion against orthodox tradition ,vhich
had its source in the ne,v sciences.
1 have been seeking to explain the causes which,
now more than two generations ago, brought about

1 J. S. Mill's Examination of Sir TV. Hamilton' 8 Philo80phy, 4th ed.
p. 129.
, ,T ohn Wesley's famous protest against Calvinism was not less
impassioned t.han J. S. l\Iill'p.

PRESENT-DAY UNSETTLEI\IENT 21
the breakdo,vn of the religious tradition in Protestant
England. Since that time many things have
happened. New currents of thought and feeling
have arisen and altered the general temper and
opinion of our society on many subjects, so that the
opinions of the Victorian Age have become almost a
synonym for something old-fashioned and abandoned.
1\Ieanwhile, on the field of religion and theology a
vast amount of ,york has been done on critical lines,
in great part sane, illuminating, and reconstructive,
so that on the whole-if scattered individuals. could
be taken together-there ,vould be found to be a
very strong body amongst us of rationally convinced
believers in the Christian Creed. Popular religious
movements, again, have been vigorously at work and
have gathered and maintained in allegiance great
groups of believers and ,vorshippers. There is a
widespread feeling in the country that nothing can
take the place of the Christian religion and that we
cannot do without it; and there has arisen recently a
"idespread desire for religious unity, generally, ho,v-
ever, accompanied by a great un,villingness to face
the question of its intellectual basis. All these things
have happened and have deeply altered the intellectual
atmosphere. But one thing has not occurred. There
has not been any restoration of the authority of
religious tradition-that is, any restoration on a
broad scale of the sense of security of belief or
agreement in believing. Still, if you take any casual
collection of t,venty men and ,vomen, and have the
opportunity of ascertaining their religious beliefs, you
,vill find an extraordinary diversity and uncertainty
among them.
It is worth ,vhile noticing some of the characteristic
features or causes of this present-day unsettlement,

22 THE BREAKDO\VN OF TRADITION
so far as it can be distinguished from what prevailed
a generation or two ago.
1. The atmosphere of democracy possesses the
intellectual world and takes the form of an almost
unlimited assertion and recognition of the right of
private judgement. For reasons only too evident
,vithin the Church, whether we are thinking of the
Church of England or of the ,vider world of Christian
belief, authority is discredited. " There is nothing,"
it is said with some reason, " ,vhich you may not hear
denied or affirmed in the pulpits of the Church."
Even the Catholic moven1ent in the Church of England,
which makes its special appeal to authority, has in
fact maintained itself and spread largely by an appeal
to the rights of congregations to worship and believe
as they please. N o,v, the claim to an unlimited right
to believe as one pleases is indisputable as a maxim
of civil society; but there is an extraordinary lack
of any balancing perception that morally the right of
private judgment depends on the pains that have
been taken to form the judgement by adequate and
conscientious enquiry. Nevertheless, the claim pre

vails almost unchallenged.
2. Fifty years ago it used to be commonly held
that, though there was great doubt about many
established doctrines of the faith, there was, and ,vould
continue to be, almost complete agreement on the
standard of Christian morality; but any such
unreasonable expectation has been indeed rudely
shattcred. It must have becn expressed originally in
sublimc unconsciousness that the whole industrial
system, then in its glory, had been built up on a
basis of profound revolt against the central la 'v of
Christian morality, " Thou shalt love thy neighbour
as thyself." There are few things in history more

INDIVIDUALIS
I 28
astonishing than the silent acquiescence of the
Christian world in the radical betrayal of its ethical
foundation. But it is not only in the industrial
,vorld that there has been a rebellion against Christian
moral principles. The same rebellion is evident to-day
in every section of our society against the Christian
standard of sexual morality, alike among the single
and the married, and it is open and deliberate. Thus
masses of men and women to-day are as much without
any sense of a definite standard having divine
authority in matters of conduct as in matters of creed.
3. This tendency to unlimited individualism, or to
organized revolt from the long-accepted standards of
religious and moral authority, has been accentuated
by popular literature.
Iost people read little but
novels and newspapers. Now, novels in England of
recent years have been largely occupied ,vith glorifying
the revolt. Authority is represented as stupid.
Passionate feeling is to have its o,vn way. And the
newspapers advertise every startling "new vie,v,"
however intellectually ,vorthless or unbalanced, simply
because it is exciting and sells the newspaper, ,vhile
the careful utterance of the sober thinker is passed
by unreported.
4. Even the new and popular science of psychology,
especially "the psychology of religious belief"-
its intentions being, no doubt, misunderstood-is
made to minister to the prevalent. religious individual-
isn1 or subjectivism. Experience, I suppose, may
be properly defined to be reality as felt. The value
of the feeling vrill thus be constantly estimated to
depend upon its relation to objective reality. But
psychology studies the feelings and movements of the
soul without any regard to objective standards. Thus
" experience" is taken to mean simply feeling, and

24 THE BREAlillOWN OF TRADITION
is valued in proportion as it is intense-often in
proportion as it is abnormal and therefore specially
interesting. Thus, the popular cry " Let us be our
real selves" is taken to mean let us " remove inhibi-
tions" and be our unrestrained selves. This is no
doubt a parody of scientific psychology; but it
appears to be a very-popular parody, and I ,vill quote,
in confirmation of 'v hat I have said, the serious ,vords
of a ,vell-kno,vn American psychologist, Professor J. B.
Pratt: I " Psychology studies the idea of God and the
idea of the solar system, and stops there. But
neither astronomy nor theology means to limit our
study to our ideas. They both mean to be objective
-and it is hard to see why one should be denied this
privilege, if it be granted to the other. And if
objectivity be denied to theology, the dangers that
inevitably result are evident. Theology beconles
purely subjective-a description of the ,yay we feel;
the idea of God is substituted for God . . . and the
psychology of religion, having absorbed all that ,vas
objective in religion, finds it has nothing left to study,
or at best becomes a branch of abnormal psychology.
, This method,' writes Boutroux, 'if it succeed, will
lead sooner or later to the abolition of the fact itself,
while the dogmatic criticism of religions has striven
in vain for centuries to obtain this result. . . . Con-
trary, then, to the other sciences ,vhich leave standing
the things that they explain, the one just nlentioned
has this renlarkable property of destroying its object
in the act of describing it, and of substituting itself
for the facts in proportion as it analyses them.' "
I think the language of both the above quotations

1 The author of Th
Paycholo{l1J oj Religious Belief and The Religiou,
Oon8ciou.Bne
8 (Macmillan: New York). My quotation is from the
latter work, p. 41.

NEW RELIGIONS

25

is open to criticism. But their substantial meaning
is plain and true.
5. In this confused ,,"orld, thirsting alike for novelty
and for assurance, there emerge" new religions," for
instance, Christian Science, Theosophy, and (only so
far as it has a special religious doctrine of its o,vn)
Spiritualism. 1 In their substance or basis they are
not by any means ne,v, but revivals of very old forms
of religious belief, the first t,vo strikingly recalling the
features of ancient Gnosticism. If ,ve examine the
actual basis of their special propaganda, it appears
to be extraordinarily untrust,,"orthy and to make an
inordinate claim on credulity. None the less they
push their way "ridely amongst those ,vho are rebels
against the old-fashioned kinds of authority; they
make converts, numerous, zealous, and proselytizing,
and constitute a very distinctive feature in the mixed
present-day ,vorld of religious opinions.
6. Finally, we must take note that the hope, widely
entertained, that the trials, sacrifices, and agonies of
the Great War would recall men to God-to a more
vivid sense of His judgements and of their need of
His mercy and protection, and so rally them to the
faith of their fathers, to the old Christian Gospel, as
the only really trustworthy basis for life-this hope
has not apparently been fulfilled on any wide scale.
On the contrary, the war and its experiences appear
to have done a great deal to deepen doubts of the
reality of divine love or the moral government of the
world. It has weakened the Liberal faith in Progress
,vithout strengthening the faith in God. In the case
of the most serious, it has left them perplexed; in

1 I desire to distinguish spiritualilm as ß religious propaganda
from spiritualism 80 far as it means ß BcientÏfio enquiry into psychioal
phenomena.

26 THE BREAKDO\VN OF TRADITION
the mass, it has weakened idealism and deepened a
cynical materialism-" Let us eat and drink, for
to-morrow ,ve die." Certainly, on the whole, it has
left the youth of the country ,videly and deeply
alienated from the Church and from organized religion.

It has seemed to me necessary, at starting, to
attempt this sort of analysis of the causes ,vhich lie
behind our present religious discontents and dis-
organization. Granted that the facts are, more or
less, as I have represented them, and the causes such
as I have described, the question arises-What is the
remedy? When ,ve speak of the remedy, we are apt
to imagine a ren1edy on a large scale. But I do not
think that anything like religious recovery on a large
scale is likely to occur at present. I agree ,vith Dr.
Tennant, ,vho says, " As I have repeatedly emphasized,
it looks as if for the present any universally [I ,vould
say" generally"] acceptable reconstruction of funda-
Inental Christian doctrines is not feasible. We feel
the need of it doubtless ,vith some natural impatience;
but perhaps all we can no,v do in that direction is to
prepare for it." 1 And the best way to prepare for
it is to clarify one's own mind. It is out of a
reconstruction of belief in this or that man
s own mind,
or in the minds of small groups of men and women, that
the larger reconstruction must be based.
I ask again then, What is the remedy for religious
unsettlement and intellectual dissatisfaction in the
individual? I leave for the present out of account
those men and women who find it consistent ,vith
their conscience to refuse full intellectual enquiry into
the difficult questions ,vhich haunt their imagination,
1 F. R. Tenna.nt, · I The Present Condition of Some Fundamental
Christia.n Doctrines" in the Oonstructive Quarterly, Sept. 1920, p. 483.

THE DUTY OF JUDGEl\IENT 27
and who consult \vhat appear to be the interests and
peace of their souls by accepting passively the authority
of the Church. I do not wish to criticize this procedure.
But my conscience, and that of many others, will by
no means admit of it. Granted the truth of the
foundation doctrines of Christianity about God and
about Christ and about His Spirit, and we see clearly
enough that the question of authority-that is, the
question of the truest or best form of the Christian
religion-will become the most important question.
But for me it is the foundation of all claims of Christian
authority \vhich is at stake. There is the first
question. Till these foundation questions are settled,
the claim of authority, especially as it actually presents
itself in a divided Christendom, cannot suffice-cannot
even explicitly enter. In the court of pure reason,
where nothing is more sacred than free enquiry, we
have heard the doubt, or more than the doubt, ex-
pressed by a long succession of serious and deep-
thinking nlen, whether our foundations \vill bear
investigation. \Ve cannot put aside that claim for
free enquiry, and to the limit of our power we must,
for our o\vn satisfaction, pursue it with the utmost
impartiality possible.
l\Ioreover, this is not, as has already been said,
only a matter for specialized experts or professional
scholars. The discussion has been left in the past
too much to them. Religion, after all, is for common
men. It is in the region of the common reason, at
least as much as in the circles of specialized study,
that it must be judged. This is, most noticeably,
the assun1ption of the Ne\v Testament. It appeals
to the common judgelnent. It summons each man to
judge for himself. "\Vhy even of yourselves judge
ye not what is right?" "Prove all things; hold

28 THE BREAKDO\VN OF TRADITION
fast that which is good." "He that is spiritual
judgeth all things, and he himself is judged of no
man." 1 These words of our Lord and of St. Paul
are a challenge to common men. We must brace
ourselves individually and deliberately to the task
of facing the intellectual questions and seeing if we
cannot reach decisiòns, at least provisional decisions
such as can be the reasonable basis, 'v hen put to
account in life, of practical certainties.
And it is a quite unsatisfactory method to attack
each particular problem, ,vhich happens to present
itself or to be urged upon us, in isolation and at
haphazard. \Ve must train ourselves to thinking
systematicall y.
I appeal, therefore, in this book to men and
,vomen of ordinary intelligence and education, dis-
carding prejudices and arming themselves with
nothing but the resolute determination to know and
follo,v the truth, to begin ,vith me at the beginning,
and seek to build the fabric of a belief which they
can feel in their conscience to be reasonable and
convrncmg.
1 Luke xii. õ7; 1 Thes8. v. 21; 1 Cor. ii. 15.
Additional note, see p. 3.
Ir. Bernard Shaw's Preface to his
Back to MethU8elah shows in striking and characteristic fashion how
the triumphant Darwinism of the Mid-Victorian days misled the
public, and how fallacious was the kind of belief in progress which
it generated. The U orthodox" and highly dogma.tio political
economy was equa.lly deceptive. Such provoking critics of the
domina.nt intellectuals as Samuel Butler and John Ruskin have been
j ustifìed.

CHAPTER II

THE CONDITIONS OF HOPEFUL RECONSTRUCTION

IF a seriously minded person is determined to emerge
from the confused condition of Inind on matters of
religion, the causes of which I have sought to describe,
he does well, for the time at least, to forget all past
controversies and, like René Descartes, "the father
of modern philosophy," to begin at the beginning,
and freeing himself, as far as may be, from prejudices
and presuppositions, to lay the foundation of reason-
able certitude and build upon it stage by stage.
No doubt this is not the way in which our con-
victions on religion or on most other su bjects actually
grow upon us. The genesis of convictions appears
commonly to be as little as possible the result of
rational processes. And there is often no order in
them. There are people who believe passionately in
the Church and the Sacraments, but appear to have
a very slender and meagre belief in God. l This lack
of order or proportion in our religious convictions is,
in part, the reason ,vhy they are so easily thro,vn
into confusion. But if ,ve are seeking to reconstruct
a rational fabric of beliefs, we must begin at the

1 I remember A. H. M:ackonochie, that much-miscalled" Ritual-
ist," saying in a sermon, somewhere about 1870, " There are peoplE'!
who believe in the blessed Sacraments, but do not seem to believe
in Almighty God."

29

lIB&.,A
Y ST. 'r,:
RY'S C lLEGE

80 CONDITIONS OF HOPEFUL RECONSTRUCTION
beginning; and there are certain qualities of mind
which are, I think, essential.
1. We must make ourselves as free as possible from
the passions bred of antagonism and disappointment.
For instance, if a man has been brought up in the
Church, and, as so frequently happens, has beconle
" offended " ,vith the Church, because he has found
it, in this or that clergYlnan under 'v hose ministry
he has been, or whose words have been reported, or
through the records of history, obscurantist in temper,
and narro,v and intolerant in spirit, or if he has seen
it bearing no such witness as it ought to have borne
against injustice and oppression, but leaguing itself
with the forces of wealth and class selfishness-if
something of this kind has happened, the" offended"
person is commonly embittered and quite incapable
of an unprejudiced judgement. Bishop Butler, in
famous words, speaks of the attitude of the fashion-
able ,vorld in his day to,vards religion. "It is conle,
I know not ho,v, to be taken for granted, by many
persons, that Christianity is not so much as a subject
for enquiry; but that it is, now at length, discovered
to be fictitious. And accordingly they treat it as
if, in the present age, this were an agreed point
among all persons of discernment; and nothing
remained, but to set it up as a principal subject of
mirth and ridicule, as it were by ,yay of reprisals,
for its having so long interrupted the pleasures of the
world." 1 This demand for reprisals describes the
attitude of a vast number of people in our own age.
Their attitude towards the Church or towards
orthodoxy is the attitude of those who would take
reprisals on a ,veakened tyrant. In many cases it is,

I From the Advertizement to The Analogy.

RIDDfu
CE FROl\I BIAS 81
as in Butler's day, the Church as clahning of them a
moral restraint which they have resolved to repudiate,
,vhich is chiefly in their mind. With the nobler sort
the restraint they are repudiating is the claim laid
upon free thought and democratic aspiration. But in
either case the bitter desire to take reprisals on the
Church is totally destructive of a calm and reason-
able judgement. Everything that makes against the
creed or moral standard of the Church is eagerly
welcolned. What Inakes for it is ignored or despised.
This is not reason, but the most deceptive of passions.

Iust ,ve be for ever in reactions? Can we not at
least recognize, as one of the most certain conclusions
of history, that the best things, liberty and equality,
no less than authority and inherited experience, are
the most capable of dangerous abuse; but that the
excesses and follies, whether of authority or liberty,
are no evidence that there is not, behind the excesses
and follies, a wisdom necessary for man? "La
vérité," said Renan, "consiste dans les nuances."
The method of " all or nothing " is of no account in
the court of reason. There is no chance of finding
truth, unless ,ve seek calmly to estimate ,vhat is the
solid rational strength which lies behind all that
gives point and passion to the cry, "Tantum relligio
potuit suadere malorum." Those 'v ho are plainly
" out to score off " orthodoxy or, on the other hand,
eager to sho,v up "the bankruptcy" of science or
criticism, can al,vays do it easily enough, but the gain
for truth or for real intellectual liberty is not con-
siderable.
2. Secondly, we ought to begin our search with a
real determination, if possible, to reach at least a
provisional decision. There are a vast number of
questions on ,vhich this is rationally impossible, and

82 CONDITIONS OF IIOPEFUL RECONSTRUCTION
such questions no doubt abound in theology and
philosophy. For there really are no sufficient groW1ds
for a decision. But it is impossible to doubt that
the merely "critical" temper of our day, or at a
lo,ver stage the temper of mere intellectual curiosity,
is sceptical in the sense that it loves the process of
enquiry for its own sake and has no real desire to
draw a conclusion. 1 It does not see the practical
importance of decision nor feel the responsibility of
luaking up its mind. It finds each ne,v vie,v interest-
ing. It never can say a decisive" no." It miscalls
its state of n1ental indecision openmindedness. No
doubt there are a vast number of questions, besides
those ,vhich, owing to the limitations of human
faculty, no man can decide, on which ,ve as individuals
are ,vithout the materials for forming a judgement.
They are questions for specialists. We can but read
the record of this learned man's opinion and that
learned man's rebutter ,vith a certain degree of
interest. We are and must be only spectators of a
conflict in "Thich "re cannot share. But ,vith regard
to moral and religious matters in the deepest sense,
this cannot be so. They concern us vitally. Our
manhood calls out for assurance, if ,ve can reasonably
ha ve it. The popular suggestion that "it does not
really 111atter so much what exactly a man believes"
is a fallacy. However many instances we may find
of beliefs that have no influence on conduct, of
atheists who live as Christians and Christians who
live as atheists, yet on a broad vie,v of human nature,
in the long reaches of human life, ,ve cannot but see

1 There are famous instances of protests by great thinkers tha.t
the search for truth was to be preferred to the finding of it, but I
believe that, at bottom, this state of mind represents a. disease of the
intellect.

THE DUTY OF DECISION 33
that ho\v men and WOlnen behave depends 011 \vhat
they really believe about the unseen fOlmdations of
life, about God and duty, about heaven and hell.
It does not seem to me rational to doubt that the
marked differences bet\veen the various civilizations
or types of human society, ,vhich have been formed
under the influence of the J e,vish or the Christian
or the Mohammedan or the Buddhist or the Brahman
religion, have been due in very large measure to the
differences in the beliefs about God and human
destiny which underlie them. And what is true of
nations or "crowds" is true also of individuals or
the smaller and more consciously formed groups. I
cannot imagine a man doubting this about himself,
if he will be at pains to distinguish his real from his
conventional creed. And what we are seeking for
is a real creed-a rea] intellectual decision such as is
forlned to be acted upon.
Of course it is a betrayal of n1Y rational nature to
make premature decisions on inadequate grounds.
But with regard to ,vhat really matters for human
life, I must accept the challenge of the great masters
of human life and determine to seek decisions, where
decisions are rationally possible, and to test their
validity by putting them to account in life. It is
only in this ,va y that decisions of a provisional nature
can become permanent convictions.
No doubt we may form wrong decisions, and
grov\Ting experience or growing kno,vledge n1ay con-
vince us of our mistake. Then ,ve n1ust go through
the process which James Hinton used to describe as
Ii correcting our premises." Nevertheless, it is better
I to make an intellectual decision or accept a creed on
what seems to be the weight of the evidence on the
w hole, and to use it for all it is worth, and then, if
4.

34 CONDITIONS OF IIOPEFUL RECONSTRUCTION
need arise, revise it or even abandon it-if all this be
done carefully and with all due consideration-than
to remain for ever uncomlnitted and in suspense.
Nor must ,ve suffer ourselves to be deluded or dis-
couraged from thinking by what I may call the
" pragnlatist " argument-that it is only the " moral
values" that really matter-that we can be certain
about our nloral duty and the conception of life
,vhich is involved in it, and that beyond this we may
be indifferent to "metaphysics." For we cannot
thus separate the moral fronl the intellectual or meta-
physical question. As has already been said, the
strain to-day for multitudes of men and women is
especially upon the moral standard. Because it
lacks the support of a clear faith, the moral standard
either breaks down or beconles lowered to the level
of popular opinion. To this extent certainly the
mass of men are rational, that they want to know
,vhy they should pursue a difficult and, as it often
appears, a solitary course of action, inconsistent
equally with their apparent interests and the common
opinion of their fello"\vs. And in effect this lneans that
they lTIUSt have some sort of theology. No doubt
their reason for assenting to their creed may be
lnainly the moral reason-the kind of reason ,vhich
can be best expressed as the conviction that a belief
'v hich is necessary for a good life must be true or, as
people say, "practically" true. This is an argu-
ment which ,ve shall have to estÎ1nate later. l But
,vhatever the reason which in their minds substan-
tiates their personal creed, some sort of creed about
God and their own soul individual men and ,vomen
nlust have if they are to live by any standard better
than that of public opinion; and, ,ve may add,
1 See pp. 111-12.

SPIRITUAL INTUITION 85
,vithout a creed commonly accepted or at least held
in reverence about God and the soul, the level of
public moral opinion will be constantly degrading.
3. Thirdly, this capacity for reaching decision
,viII need a frank recognition of the manifold grounds
and methods of certainty. The nlethods of arriving
at conclusions ,vhich is specially characteristic of
science-,vhat Dar,vin called" the grinding of general
laws out of observed instances" I-is a part of the
operations of the human mind in gaining truth which
it ,vould be impossible to ignore and difficult to over-
estimate, but ,ve cannot recognize in it the whole of
our resources. Consider the great artists. They
convey to us truth about the universe ,vhich we are
nlaimed beings if ,ve do not recognize, but ,vhich is
apprehended and conveyed and appreciated through
methods wholly different from the methods of scientific
reasoning, and ,vhich scientific reasoning can neither
reach nor communicate. William de l\Iorgan I de-
scribes in a ,vonderful passage the effect of a sonata
of Beethoven on a man without special musical gifts
or knowledge in an hour of desolation and despair.
It reasoned ,vith him, after its manner. It conveyed
to him reassurance which nothing else could convey.
"I have ever since regarded the latter [Beethoven]
as not so much a Composer as a Revelation." "Ho,v
often have I said to myself after some perfectly
convincing phrase of Beethoven, ., Of course, if that
is so, there can be no occasion to ,vorry.' It could not
be translated, of course, into vulgar grammar or
syntax; but it left no doubt on the point, for all
that." Those who have any appreciation of music,
1 Of course, even the physical sciences owe very much to
prophetic intuitions.
2 J o8eph Vance, pp. 404-7.

86 CONDITIONS OF HOPEFUL RECONSTRUCTION
however deficient in n1usical science, must feel after
long listening to Beethoven ,vhat this lneans. He
conveys to us a temper of mind, almost a philosophy
-though not such as can be made directly articulate
in intellectual propositions. It is by feeling or
intuition that this supreme artist gains his profound
vision of experience and of God. But it seems to me
quite impossible to deny that it is insight into reality,
the sort of insight which at bottoll1 involves a philo-
sophy of rational meaning or purpose in the universe.
'" The rest may reason-and ,velcome: it is we
musicians ,vho kno\v."
The same claim must be made on behalf of the
intuitions of the poets, the prophets, and the mystics
in the most general sense-I mean the religious souls
,vho have a clear intuition of God and live in com-
munion with Him. All these classes of persons,
,vho have played so vast a part in the history of man-
kind, are convinced of some kind of reality-some
law or aspect or controlling spirit of the universe
which is to them the most certain of realities; and
this conviction of theirs has been reached often in
utter scorn of reasoning, or at any rate not by its
methods. 1

1 Cf. The Sadhu, by Canon B. H. Streeter and l\Ir. A. I. Appasamy.
This account of a still living Indian Christian Inystic is of deep
interest. We may doubt his particular conclusions. I am not now
concerned with these. All that I Rln concerned to insi[Jt is that
the method of intuition is, as much as the method of scientific
induction, a. met.hod of arriving at truth about the universe. 'Ve
should note that. the mystics differ from the prophets in thiE:1 respect:
that the latter tell us about God-they have a definite message
about His will or character to deliver t.o men, of the truth of which
we must judge; but the former, for the most part, are impressive
not for what they tell us about God, but simply by the int.ensity
with which they feel and see God in all things and all things in
God.

THE TESTS OF INTUITIONS 87
Now it is quite obvious that such" intuitions" and
"experiences" may be really quite unworthy of the
names they claim. And the message of the prophets
or seers may be quite contradictory. In fact they
often are. \Ve say, "" They cannot all be true." For
intuition means insight into reality, and experience
properly means reality as felt. But the most master-
ful convictions reached by the power of emotion in
the human soul may be pure delusions-they may
correspond to nothing in the realities of the ,vorld.
It would be only too easy to prove this proposition.
And in these days, ,vhen everyone talks about
psychology, .there is, as has been already said, a
seriously dangerous tendency to attach so much
importance to states of mind as to forget that the
value of the subjective depends ,vholly at the last
resort upon its correspondence ,vith the objective.
It is very difficult to state precisely the tests which
are to enable us to discriminate bet,veen intuition of
reality and delusive imagination. T,vo of the most
important of such tests are, no doubt, (1) that the
spiritual intuition of the prophet or mystic or poet
should be found in experience to give to those who
accept it, and that over long periods of time and a
,vide range of humanity, a new po,ver in life, as, for
example, l\'lohammed's intuition of the One God and
His ,viII brought a startling degree of new life into
the Arab races. This we believe can only have been
because he had perceived some vital truth of fact,
however much fanaticism or error may have been
mixed up wïth his message. And (2) that the spiritual
intuitions of the mystic, when translated, as they
must be, into propositions for the intellect, should
show themselves either capable of harmonization
\vith all that, by other faculties, men have discovered

88 CONDITIONS OF HOPEFUL RECONSTRUCTION
about the universe in a consistent unity, or at
least, if complete synthesis is beyond us, should not
be in plain discrepancy with our knowledge as a
,vhole.
I am aware that this demand for agreement, or
at least absence of plain discrepancy, between the
conclusions which, on different grounds, we are led
to form needs to be pressed with much caution.
I gather that Sir William Bragg, in his recent Boyle
Lecture, has called attention within the region of
physics to the discrepancy between the apparent
intellectual postulate of the explosive action of
electrons, suggesting something like Newton's corpus-
cular theory, and the "firmly established" ,vave theory
of the transference of energy, and added these sug-
gesti ve words, " Weare obliged to use each theory
as occasion demands and wait for further knowledge
as to ho,v it may be possible that both should be true
at the same time. Toleration of opinion is a recog-
nized virtue. The curiosity of the present situation
is that opposite opinions have to be held or used by
the same individual in the faith that some day the
combined truth may be made plain." 1 If this is a
rational attitude, as I think it is, towards discrepant
theories ,vithin the region of the same science, much
more may it be rational within the wide compass of
the whole of our knowledge. The" doctrine of rela-
tivity," of which we hear so much to-day-the recog-
nition that our best theories or explanations of the
universe cannot express absolute truth, but only the
best measure of truth attainable by us with our
limited vision-makes us no doubt tolerant of apparent
discrepancies between our conclusions in one depart-
1 See The Timu report of Sir William Bragg's recent Robert
Boyle Lecture, Friday, May 13, 1921.

TOLERATION OF CONTR.ADICTIONS 89
nlent of kno,vledge and experience and our conclusions
in another.
Nevertheless, there is a tendency in philosophy
to-day, and not only among pragmatists, 1 to carry the
toleration of contradictory theories to a point which
seems to me to subvert rationality altogether. It is
surely of the essence of reason to demand synthesis.
It n1ay be necessary to entertain contradictory
theories simultaneously, at least for a time, where
different classes of fact seem to force them upon
us, but at least this should cause in our minds " a
pressing uneasines5" and not be allo,ved to subvert
the essential rational demand for a consistent universe.
But I am not now attempting to devise tests to
discrin1Ìnate the real from the delusive either in the
reasonings or intuitions of mankind. All that I am
no,v contending for is what artists and prophets and
mystics have always insisted upon, and what the rising
science of psychology is pressing upon us, not without
perilous excess-viz. that if ,ve ,vant to reach the
,vhole truth, so far as we can, concerning the world we
live in, we must trust the ,vhole of our faculties-not
our po,vers of abstract reasoning only, or only our
po,vers of scientific discovery higher or lo,ver, but also
the more emotional and active powers of our nature-
its capacities for intuition and feeling and willing.
Anyone, in fact, who examines himself must almost
certainly reach the conclusion that a great proportion
of the convictions of his own mind, such as he would
find it impossible to repudiate without repudiating his
humanity, and impossible even to doubt without

1 The language of Dr. Bradley, for instance, surely is somewhat
reckless, e.g. "Is there any need for our attempt to avoid self-
contradiction! " (Essays on Truth and Reality, p. 430, cf. index under
heading "Consistency H).

40 CONDITIONS OF HOPEFUL RECONSTRUCTION
being self-convicted of treason against the good, have
been arrived at by feeling; ,vhether it be by a moral or
religious tradition being verified and approved in
his o,vn conscience and experience, or by some feeling
being aroused in himself individually and acted upon,
and not by any process of reasoning. This means,
on the broadest scale, that feeling, generating an in,vard
vision of reality, or intuition-which is faith of a sort,
because it runs ahead of all reasoning and even resents
its interference-is a large part in our human equip-
ment as searchers after truth and reality. It is quite
compatible with such a fundamental respect for
feeling and conscience to admit that the conclusions
of science must be allo,ved to correct the rashness
or crudeness of the convictions ,vhich conscience and
feeling suggest, just as, on the other hand, conscience
and feeling must be allo,ved to enlarge the narro,vness
of the outlook of science or ratiocination. The point
is that the ,vhole of our mental or spiritual capacities
must be trained and brought into exercise if ,ve are
to be true to the ,vhole of reality.
The co-operation and interaction of our different
capacities may be made clearer by t,vo illustrations.
(1) The Confession of Leo Tolstoy,. surely among
the most moving of Inodern documents, though
neither our feeling nor our reason ma y accept all
his conclusions, yet suggests convincingly one thing
at least-how reasoning and feeling combine and
intert,vine in all genuine search for the truth, feeling
insisting on reopening questions which reasoning had
sought to close, sometimes gaining the victory over
reasoning, sometimes corrected by reasoning, but
always, so to speak, intervening, if reasoning is to be
kept from losing itself in vacancy or self-despair.
1 A Confes8ion, tre.P..8. by A
'lmer Maude (Oxford Univ. Press).

SCIENCE AND FAITH 41
Finally, it appears, the ground of all sane theory
seemed to Tolstoy to be the feeling for the good life,
the recognition of it ,vhen we see it, and the
assurance that it must be '\forth while to live it, and
that it must turn out to be in accordance ,vith right
reason.
(2) l\Iy point could also be happily illustrated by
many of us from intimacy with scientific men who
are also unashamedly religious men. We must
acknowledge that almost exclusive preoccupation
,vith scientific enquiries tends to generate a disinclina-
tion for, or a distrust of, the methods of the mystic
or the poet or the ordinary religious man-the
methods by which religious convictions are usually
ârrived at and exercised. Thus it is not surprising
that many scientific men are agnostics and -some pro-
claim their agnosticism. All exclusive preoccupation
,vith one kind of mental activity, ,vhatever it be, is a
specializing of the mind which tends to narrowness.
Instances would be easy to give from many quarters.
But this narrowness is not characteristic of all scien-
tific men. Thus George Romanes bore witness that
of the brilliant galaxy of mathematicians who were
the glory of Cambridge about 1870-80 the majority
were orthodox in religion I-doubtless neither because
of, nor in spite of, their scientific insight, but because
they were something else besides scientific men.
In a somewhat later generation Pasteur, though
perhaps the most eminent among scientific men
who Vlere also professing Christians, would by no
means stand alone ,vith his frank declaration of a
childlike faith in the Catholic religion, again doubtless
neither because of his science nor in spite of it, but
by the exercise of faculties ,vhich science barely uses
1 Romanes, Thoughts on Religion (Longman!), pp. 137-S.

42 CONDITIONS OF HOPEFUL RECONSTRUCTION
or for its o,yn specific purposes excludes. Once in
my life I have been privileged to kno\v an able young
scientific man ,vho ,vent alUlost at a bound from
some,vhat polemical agnosticisn1 to a "Thole-hearted
faith, through an experience of mental agony which
seemed to open to him ne,v ,vindo,vs to reality.
He did not find his ne,v faith interfere ,vith his
science or restrain it. He ,vas free as ever to pursue
his special career. But he ,vas more of a man. His
humanity was fuller, because he had learned that luan
does not kno,v by scientific investigation only.
In aU this plea for breadth in the consideration of
the grounds of certitude I have used language about
" faculties" or " capacities "-reason and feeling and
,vill-in every man, such as experience, I think,
suggests or requires. \Ve are intensely conscious of
such distinct faculties and of their conflict ,vithin us.
In one departn1ent of our life there is more clairn upon
our will, in another upon our good feeling or con-
science, in another upon our po,vers of reasoning.
Again, one person is distinguished by a vigorous ,vill but
deficient in feeling or intelligence, and another appears
to be all intellect, and another "all heart and no
head." And in each of us heart and head, or conscience
and will, are apt to be in violent discord. Nevertheless
any deep vie,v of personality or any sound psychology
suffices to convince us that, however mysterious the
interaction of our faculties, or however intense at times
the consciousness of distraction and conflict, yet in fact
they are but movements of the same self. 1 The

1 It was the merit of Tertullian (de Anima, 18), at 8 time when
Christianity was emphasizing the unity of human personality, that
he made a strong protest against the tendency of the philosophers
to distinguish human faculties as if they were different entities-
"Non enim et sentire intelligere est et intelligere sentire east? " ate.

PREJUDICES 43
root of all is the common vital movement of self-
realization-the conative movement-,vhich in man
expresses itself as ,vill and emotion and rational
concept: "will " and "emotion" being distinguished
from animal instinct just in proportion as they either
pass into or presuppose rational concepts and theories
and convictions, and thereby gain consistency and
power. Our rational or argumentative powers only
emerge as an element in the \vhole conative movement
of our personality asserting itself. Thus no theory of
the world can claim to be the truth for a man which
either ultimately tends to paralyse his will or quench
his feeling or baffle his reason. For these qualities,
taken altogether and not apart, are the expression of
his fundamental self.
I know that some who read this ,viII be disposed
to feel that, having begun by asking for a temper of
mind freed from disturbing prejudices, I am no,v
allo\ving the calm reason to be flooded with prejudices
bred of ,vill or emotion. But in fact we are bound to
discriminate bet,veen " prejudice" in its etymological
sense and in its popular sense. In the latter sense it
means a condition of our judgement or intelligence in
which ,ve refuse to open our minds to disagreeable
facts or to allow them to have weight with us. It
is a fixed, unprogressive and narro,v condition of
mind, and it must be got rid of. But there is another
sense in which we are normally born with "pre-
judgements" implicit in us-as that right is better
than wrong or beauty than ugliness. These implicit
prejudgements appear to belong to our unconscious self
in a measure, and they are strengthened by our train-
ing and our experience. It is idle to demand that we
should be free of them. They are behind our coldest
reasonings as evidently as behind our most emotional

44 CONDITIONS OF HOPEFUL RECONSTRUCTION
or wilful movements. \Vhat we can do is faithfully
to bring our prejudices into the clearest light and
subject them to all the corrective discipline of ex-
perience. So ,ve can get rid of disturbing prejudices
and come into the fullest possible correspondence with
the large truth of things, as it appears to be. But we
cannot get out of ourselves, and certain prejudgements
arc in1plicit in hun1an personality.l

Now \vith this amount of preface as to the temper
and method ,vhich our attempt to reconstruct belicf
froln its foundations demands of us, let us cnter upon
our enquiry at its most fundalnental stage-let us
investigate the grounds of a belicf in God.

1 There is an admirable account of the function of education in
relation to prejudice in Plato's Republic, book iii, 401.

CHAPTER III

GROUNDS OF BELIEF IN GOD

\VE approach the fundamental question of belief in
God. It ,vill speedily appear, I think, that the most
pressing question is not whether we can believe in
God, but of ,vhat sort the God is in whom we can or
nlust believe. Atheism is very rare, and agnosticism
is a question of degree. 1 In some sense ,ve must all
be agnostics, inasmuch as, on all showing, God. passes
our understanding. The important question is: how
much can ,ve know or rátionally believe about God?
Nevertheless ,ve must not hurry forward, but ask first
'v hether belief in God at all is reasonable, and, if so,
why.
Fundamentally to disbelieve in God-to be an
atheist-means, I suppose, that we see in the world
of which we form a part no signs of anything corre-
sponding to the mind or spirit or purpose 'v hich
indisputably exists in man-no signs of a universal
spirit or reason with which we can hold communion,
nothing but blind and unconscious force. And
conversely what ,ve mean by Theism or belief in God
in its most general form is the recognition about us,
within us and above us, of a universal and eternal

1 See Pringle Pattison, Idea oj God, p. 166.
45

46 GROUNDS OF BELIEF IN GOD
reason or purpose, ,,
ith \v hich ,ve can and ought to
correspond.
This fundamental alternative ,vas stated by the
Roman Emperor l\farcus Aurelius, long ago in words
of which ,ve still feel the momentous seriousness:

" The world is either a ,ve]ter of alternate combination
and dispersion, or a unity of order and providence. If the
former, why do I care about anything else than how I shall
at last become earth? But on the other alternative I feel
reverence, I stand steadfast, I find heart in the po,ver that
disposes all." 1

Now, in earlier ages nlankind has been found
believing in many gods, or in t,vo original spiritual
principles or gods, the one good and the other evil,
which are at conflict in the universe. This latter
belief, ,vhich we call dualism, is so congruous with
part of our experience, both ,vithin ourselves and
,vithout ourselves, that it is always reviving. Never-
theless I think that, like polytheisnl properly so-called,
it is rationally ÎInpossible for us to-day. The science
of nature has demonstrated the absolute unity of
nature. Good and evil, as we kno,v them in experi-
ence, nlind and matter, the world of moral purpose
and the world of material things, are not the product
of two separate original forces. They are knit into onc
another as phases in one ,vhole, results of one force, one
system of interconnected la'\v. The universe, material
and spiritual, is, as Spinoza said, one and (in some
sense) of one substance; and God, if there be a God,
in part manifest and in part concealed in nature, is
one only. Long before the days of modern science

1
leditation8, vi. 10. I take the translation, which gives the
sense clearly, almost unchanged from Pringle Pattison.

ONLY ONE GOD m
in fact, and quite apart from Jewish or Christian
influences, the brooding mind of man had felt the unity
in things, and behind th
"gods many" of popular
belief, had been feeling its ,yay to the oneness of God. 1
Again, to-day a ne,v dualism or pluralism is raising
its head. l\fr. H. G. Wells and other prophets of the
day are calling us to believe in a God \v ho is very far
indeed from being the Creator of the universe or the
Spirit of the universe. The Power behind the ,vorld is
inscrutable. It may be cruel or merely unconscious.
But ,ve can believe in a good God \vho has some po\ver,
though He is very far from being almighty, and whom
\ve, by co-operating \vith Hinl, can help to become

...
1 It was, however, hampered by the prevailing dun1ism. In this
connexion, I think, Irenaeus, the Christian Father of the second
century, is an often disparaged man. If I am not mistaken, he saw
deep into current controversies, and successfully emancipated the
Christian mind from some of the clinging misconceptions which
haunted the philosophy inherited from Greece. Thus to him we owe
the first clear affirmation, as far as I know, of three important
principles.
1. That no fundmnental antagonism exists, or can be tolerated
in idea, between spirit and matter, for the whole universe is "of
one substance," as coming from one God, and" the Word has been
made flesh." This principle of Christian faith and philosophy is
constantly reasserted by Irenaeus, and it is one of the central
certainties of modern science. It is our deliverance from Greek
dualism.
2. That the method of God in creation and redemption is a method
of gradual and progressive advance. Here also Irenaeus asserted
again and again an important principle. He substituted the idea of
progressive development from lower to higher, from the material to
the spiritual, for the later Hellenic idea of emanations from the
Absolute and the divine, each lower than that which preceded it.
3. He also borrowed from someone whom he does not name the
assertion that the reason why all things in God's world are in measure,
order, and number is because God Himself is not infinite in the sense
of being indeterminate or capable of anything; measure or order
lies in the eternal being of God-the relationship of the Father to
the Son-imrnensus Pater in Filio mensuratus: menaura enim Patris
Filius (iv. 4 2 ).

48 GROUNDS OF BELIEF IN GOD
more po,verful. No,v, if this God, who is not the
po,ver behind nature, is anything more than 3, name
for the aspirations of men-if He is declared to be a
real Being, ,vith mind and purpose-the idea seems to
me to be purely mythological. The only po,ver ,vhich
holds me and all things in its grasp is the one all-
pervading force of universal nature. There is no
room for any other, unless it be for dependent spirits,
dependent upon it. There can be no rivalry ,vith the
one and the ultin1ate and the all-en1bracing. All
comes from it and must end in it. If this Power be
the good God, I can have a rational religion. But any
suggestion of a Being independent of it seems to Ine
to be the language of a drealn. The early Christian
poet invoked God as "the persistent energy of things"
-"Deus rerum tenax vigor." If this persistent energy
of things be indeed God, all is well. But in any case,
it is that alone in 'VhOlll ,ve live and JTIove and have
our being.
What grounds are there, for us men to-day, for
believing that the Universal Power is God? Perhaps
the grounds of such belief cannot be better expressed
in summary than in the verses-in this case, it
must be admitted, the very blank verses-of Words-
worth's Preface to the "Excursion" :

"My voice proclaims
How exquisitely the individual mind
(And the progressive powers perhaps no less
Of the whole Bpecies) to the external world
Is fitted :-and how exquisitely too-
Theme this but little heard of a.mong men-
The external world is fitted to the mind;
And the creation (by no lower name
Can it be called) which they with blended might
Accomplish.' ·

Let us pursue this line of thinking.

THE UNIVERSAL REASON 49
1. Reason is that in us which demands sequence,
regularity, and order in things. It resents mere
accident and chance occurrence.! It could, in fact,
only exist in a cosmos, i.e. an orderly world. And
such a cosmos it finds from the first in sun and moon,
in plant and animal, but mixed as it appears with
what is incalculable and purely capricious-that is,
irrational. But the more it knows, the more ground
it finds for confidence that the appearance of capricious..
ness is due only to its ignorance. Nature, it grows
to believe, is, in this sense, rational through and
through, that it corresponds to this fundamental
demand of reason for la,vand order in all things. This
faith in a universal order-a faith continually more
and more fully justified-is what makes science
possible; and philosophy accompanying or antici-
pating science finds in this response of nature to the
demand of reason the irresistible evidence of a
universal reason or mind, ensouling nature, of which
the reason or mind in us is the offspring or outcome,
participating in and co-operating with the universal
reason. This belief in the universal reason, ,vith
which our reason holds conlmunion, ,vas the Theism
or belief in God of the educated world into ,vhich
Christianity came. This, it ,vas recognized, is the
divine Being in which " we live and move and are."
Of this divine Being we, as rational beings, are in a
special sense " the offspring." I

1 Originally, no doubt, it was the apparently arbitrary element in
experience which suggested belief in gods-powerful but capricious
beings. Nevertheless some law or principle of dealing with these
fearful beings must be discovered. And the sense of order and
la.w gains upon the sense of arbitrariness.
2 Acts xvii. 28. This is what St. Paul in his argument with the
men of Athens can take for granted. So contempora.ry literature
abundantly witnesses.
5

50 GROUNDS OF BELIEF IN GOD
This argument (if it is to be called an argument, or
this almost irresistible impression made upon us by
the world) is the more popular form of what is called
the epistemological argument-the argument, that
is, from the analysis of knowledge. If ,ve are at pains
to analyse the most elementary kind of knowledge,
our kno,vledge of external objects, trees and houses,
chairs and tables, ,ve discover, to our surprise and
perhaps annoyance, that it is not the case, as we had
supposed, that the ,vorld of objects is presented to
us through our senses of touch and taste and sight
and bearing, as it were, ready made. To constitute
an object in a world of objects there is needed a mind
to hold together in permanent relation the materials
of colour, pressure, sound, and smell ,vhich come to
us through our senses. Only for such a perceiving,
relating, remembering mind can a concrete object or
world of objects exist.
lind, it appears, is necessary
for its constitution. What sort of ,vorld a dog or a
dragon-fly sees we cannot tell. But ,vhatever it sees
is, we must suppose, what its special soul or mind
constitutes for it out of the materials which its senses
supply to it.
This fact (for such it appears to be) has sometimes
been represented by "subjective idealists" as if it
meant that my mind is the maker of my world. But
tbis is plainly contradictory to the ultimate certainty
of common sense, which assures me that the world is
presented to me, not made by me. The very
suggestion of the opposite has made philosophy
ridiculous. Also it is not what the analysis of the
rudimentary act of knowledge would really suggest.
Whatever the mind in me does, it does in absolute
dependence upon and subordination towhat is supplied
to it in sensations-not only the sensations as isolated

SUBJECTIVE IDEALISl\1

51

facts, but their impact upon us in a certain regularity
of succession or simultaneity. The constructive work
of my mind is absolutely dependent upon \vhat it
receives-the subjective process upon the data
supplied. Thus I need have no fear that philosophy
is so absurd as to suggest a doubt that the external
world is independent of me or the myriad other
individual minds. But what it does suggest to me,
or even force upon me, is that the reality of an ordered
world can exist only for mind and in terms of mind.
There seen1S to be no way of escaping this conclusion.
The real world of a fly or a dog-whatever it n1ay be-
requires the mind of a fly or a dog for its existence.
The man's world of fuller reality requires the man's'
mind. The whole of the world-reality in all its
fullness and complexity postulates a universal and
perfect mind, which (whether it is to be represented
as its Creator or as its soul) would be instinctively
called divine. And it is this divine mind which
is communicating with me through all the process
of sensitive experience. In knowing more about the
world I am learning about God.
At least since the great days of Greece the philo-
sophers and the poets of the human race have been, on
the whole, constantly engaged in reinforcing this con-
viction, that you must interpret the material world in
terms of mind or spirit, and not mind or spirit in terms
of matter or physical force. Mind has the making of
things, and without creative Inind they could not be.
In reasserting this old idealist argument, I kno,v
that I am challenging the N e,v Realists. Thus Dr.
Alexander says in his Gifford Lectures 1:

" The effort of the empirical method in metaphysics is
t Space, Time, and Deity (:\facmillan, 1920), vol. i, p. 6.

52 GROUNDS OF BELIEF IN GOD
seriously and persistently to treat finite minds as one among
the many forms of finite existence, having no privilege
among them except such as it claims fron1 its greater
perfection of development. Should enquiry prove that
the cognitive faculty is unique, improbable as such a
result might seem, it would have to be accepted faithfully
and harmonized with the remainder of the scheme. But
pri1na facie there is no warrant for the assumption, still
less for the dogma, that because all experience implies a
mind, that which is experienced owes its being and its
qualities to mind. 1\linds are but the most gifted
members kno,vn to us in a democracy of things."

This " effort" to treat minds as simply things seems
to me blankly impossible. It is not, I think, an
assumption or a dogma that "things," that is, an
ordered world, involve and presuppose mind. It is the
inevitable conclusion of the first analysis of common
experience. l I must profess that the epistemological
argument does seem to me irresistible, when it claims
our recognition of Mind as necessary for a world; and
when it bids us feel ourselves in the mere act of
perceiving a ,vorld of ordered objects brought into
some sort of communion ,vith this Mind ,vhich is
in all things.
2. To some of us the form in ,vhich this kind of
argument presents itself with the greatest force is
what '\ve may call the argument from beauty.
Evolutionists have attempted to show that beauty
in animals can be accounted for without the assump-
tion of any'" intention" of being beautiful in nature
simply by the fact that beautiful beings-especially
the males-have an advantage in the struggle for
existence, and that beauty has thus a survival value,

1 The new realists are involved, I think, in 8 further difficulty
when they postulate the existence of universals independently of
minds: see Haldane, Reign oj Relativity (
Iurray), pp. 133,265, etc.

THE ARGUMENT FROM BEAUTY 53
because the qualities which give beauty to males
attract the other sex. Among all the occurring
varieties the more beautiful would, therefore, ,vithout
any intention on the part of nature, tend to propagate
their species, and the less beautiful to perish. I
believe that the biologists are using this argument
to-day with much more hesitation than Charles
Dar,vin. Sexual selection on account of beauty has
a measure of truth, it seems, but there is fair certainty
that Dar\vin gave it far too great an extension.
l\Ioreover, ho\v are we to account for the basis of this
theory, viz. the existence in the universal female of
a consistent æsthetic standard? But I do not ,vant
to pause over an argument ,vith which I have not
the exact knowledge to deal. Because, in any ca5e,
it has no application to inorganic nature, and that is
enough for me. How shall we account for the beauty
of inorganic nature-for the glory of the sea, for the
majesty of mountains, for the exquisite beauty of
nature's lines, for the splendour and delicacy of sunsets,
for the loveliness of clouds, for the music of sounds,
for the fascination of motions and colours and shapes?
On the largest scale ,ve must confess that " nature an
the time that it is working as a machine is also
sleeping as a picture." 1 All this has no connexion
with utility or survival value. And certainly, if any
other quality in things is objective-in whatever sense
the reality and qualities of natural objects are prior
to the perceiving mind in man-beauty is so. It
forces itself and impresses itself upon us. And we
cannot conceive it to be accidental. Our reason
insists that there is in nature an intention of being
beautiful-we cannot call it anything else-long pl'ior
1 From Mozley's University Sermons-the wonderful sermon on
nature which everyone ought to read.

54 GROUNDS OF BELIEF IN GOD
to the existence of man in the 'w'orld, which man
first had the faculty to appreciate; or, in other words,
that there is a spirit of beauty in the universe which
communicates with and corresponds ,vith the faculty
of beauty in man. And if this argument is irresistible
in inorganic nature, then it extends itself inevitably
over the field of vegetable and animal life, whatever
the methods by which beauty there develops. This
argument also, in one form or another, seems to me
overwhelming. I cannot resist this-

"sense f!lublime
Of something far more deeply interfused
'Vhose dwelling is the light of setting suns
And the round ocean and the living air
And the blue skies, and in the minds of men-
A motion and a spirit which impels
All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things." 1

3. In the conception of beauty we are introduced
to something ,vhich not merely exists, but indicates a
special purpose in the material world and has a
special" value." All things are not beautifuJ. Ugly
things exist, and in part must exist as the accompany-
ing condition of the beautiful things, as the glacier
could not exist without its disfiguring moraine. But
beautiful things are "worth" more than others.
And in some degree beauty lays on us, as free agents
who have to do ,vith the making of nature, a sense
of duty. We ought to cultivate beauty. To deface
nature is, ,ve feel, an outrage. But this sense of
absolute value and the accompanying sense of purpose
and duty are conveyed far more strongly by our moral
experiences. For most of us the strongest argument

1 'Vordsworth's "Tintem Abbey."

THE ARGU1\fENT FROl\1 CONSCIENCE 55
for God is the argument from conscience to a
righteousness which is absolute and divine.
The moral sense, individual and social, in mankind
-the sense of right or wrong-exhibits as varied and
in many respects as obscure a history as any element
in civilization or any mental or spiritual quality in
man. But the rudeness of early beginnings, the gross
misdirections, the strange perversions, the extra-
ordinary variations, observable in the moral sense,
as it appears in history, are equally observable in
the faculty of reasoning and the sense of beauty.
Whether the selfish instinct of self-preservation,
coupled "rith the group instinct, "rhich is altruistic,
in the animals no less than in man, can account for
the beginnings of morality is a question which at
present we may pass by. For we are absolutely
certain that in the highest specimens of our race, and
under their leadership in the average good man of
our experience, the sense of right or wrong has gro"rn
distinct from the sense of individual interest or social
pressure, and has become what finds classical expression
in the Antigone of Sophocles, or in the meditations of
the Stoics, or in the minds of the Jewish prophets, or
in the philosophy of Kant, or in Wordsworth's Hymn
to Duty-the consciousness of being in the presence
of a something not ourselves, a greater than ourselves,
something of absolute value, an authoritative and
superhuman law of righteousness, a categorical im-
perative-" thou shalt" or "thou shalt not" -laid
upon man, which makes a peremptory claim upon his
obedience, whatever be the pleasure or pain conse-
quent to him upon the performance of his obligation.
It is, I claim, an irresistible conclusion that here,
where this is recognized, that is, in the higher regions
of human experience, whatever may have been the

56 GROUNDS OF BELIEF IN GOD
dark animal or tribal origins of this majestic faculty,
lies its real meaning and interpretation. It is
incontestable that the glory and dignity of humanity
depend upon, and are bound up with, the recognition
of the supremacy of the moral ideal or law at a point
,vhere it has risen above, or distinguished itself from,
social exigencies or personal advantages. Here,
first, and here alone, where conscience recognizes its
spiritual subordination to an eternal righteousness,
claiming its glad obedience and co-operation, is the
home of the moral freedom in ,vhich ,ve recognize our
true being. Such a belief in an Absolute Right is
consistent, history sho,vs us, with a very inadequate
recognition (or none at all) of a personal God. It
may, and sometimes does in fact consist (illogically
as it would appear) ,vith explicit atheism. But it
cannot be given fair expression except by the recog-
nition that right and wrong is no mere outgrowth of
human interests or the necessities of human society.
If it emerges out of these, it gains its true character
only so far as it transcends them. It involves the
recognition of the morally right as a quality of
absolute value, ,vhich imposes itself on man absolutely
because he is rational and spiritual. It cannot be
interpreted as a merely human quality. Thus we
are bound to conclude that the ordered world, of
,vhich man is only a part, contains or involves this
quality of eternal righteousness. Like reason itself,
of which it is an aspect, like beauty, so righteousness
belongs to the universal and eternal Being, and,
because this is so, men have called this Being God,
and ,vorshipped it. l

1 The above argument, in its three divisions, here very smnmarily
treated, may be found, underlying their many differences, in most of

THE Vi\.LE OF SOUL-:\IAKI
G 57
Here, in the moral region, very much more than
in the region of beauty, we are encompassed with
the sense of ,vhat ought to be. l\Ioral goodness
exists, but under conditions of continual and some-
times desperate struggle, and in each individual with
Inore or less of manifest imperfection. But whatever
its struggles and imperfections, goodness, we are
convinced, is what ought to be. It represents the
purpose of the world for free personalities. Whatever
else the world may be, it is, in the region covered by
the existence of persons, a "vale of soul-making,"
as Keats called it, a scene for the making of character
and goodness under conditions of severest trial.
And ,ve find ourselves, in spite of appearances, impelled
to believe that the moral purpose of the world, in
general and in particular persons, is intended to gain
the victory. This is the ground of the strong con-
viction of our moral consciousness that our best
aspirations are not kindled in us only to be baffled
and defeated. The great ,vorld-force, ,vhich over vast
areas of the universe appcars so wholly indifferent to
moral considerations, here seems unmistakably to
disclose a mind and purpose making for righteousness,
though it must be admitted that the disclosure seems
often in experience painfully ambiguous and
embarrassed.
So far we are taken by the general trend of con-
temporary philosophy, and ,ve feel the ground secure
under our feet. But of course it will be said, we
have reached here no more than "the higher pan-

our recent philosophers. Perhaplii the best recent books to which
to refer a. would-be student a.re Dr. Pringle Pattison's Idea oj God
(Oxford, 1917), and Dr. Borley's lvloral Value8 and the Idea oj God
(Cambridge, 1918)-an extraordinarily impressive book-also Lord
Haldane's Reign oj Relativity (l\Iurray, 1921).

58 GROUNDS OF BELIEF IN GOD
theism" I-the recognition in the ,vorld, of ,vhich we
are a part, of spiritual qualities and values, and what
,ve cannot but call spiritual purpose, with which as
spiritual beings, rational, beauty-loving, and moral, we
are called to co-operate, and ,vhich as eternal and
universal spirit ,ve are moved to worship. This is
the immanent Goá-God in all things and in us.
Well, if this belief and accompanying worship is no
Inore than pantheism, let us be at least pantheists.
And let us recognize that, to this spiritual interpre-
tation of nature, the scientific view of the ,vorld,
,,,,hich since the days of Darwin has become approxi-
mately universal, offers no sort of hindrance. Science
bids us contemplate an age-long process by which,
out of some original elements and conditions, to us
but dimly imaginable, there was evolved a universal
order, and out of the inorganic order life and the
forms of life, vegetable and animal, and out of the
animal creation rational man. \Ve shall not, if
,ve are ,vise, lay stress on the gaps in the scientific
story of creation, or build on the conviction that
living matter could not have been evolved out of
,vhat had no life, or rationality out of animal mind.
But what we shall claim is that the fact that living
beings and spiritual beings emerged in an age-long
process out of a world ,vhich was lifeless and ,vithout
any spiritual consciousness in itself, does not n1ean

1 Dr. lnge (Personal ldealism, p. 43) would restrict. the name
Pantheistt.o "those who hold that God is present equally in every part
of His creation," equally in rational man and in the clods, and thereby
abolish nIl sensf' of "values "-all sense of higher and lower, or of an
ascending scale in nature as God is more fully revealed. But it is
more in accordance with general usage and with the facts of the
case to speak of Pantheism higher and lower, and to reckon as Pan-
theists all who recognize a spirit immanent and operative in nature,
but not, as far as they can see, independent of it or transcending it.

l\IIND AND
L\TTER

59

that life and spirit can be interpreted in terms of
material force and chemical change, as if they were
nothing more. The opposite is the case. Rather it
is the flower and fruit of nature which interpret the
seed from which it springs. When mind in man
emerges in the process of creative evolution, then,
and only then, does the secret of nature begin to
be recognized. "l\lan is organic to nature." 1 The
reason in man discovers the rational in nature; the
sense of beauty in man finds itself in presence of the
universal beauty; the conscience in man finds itself
in presence of an eternal righteousness. The con-
clusion is forced upon us that instead of interpreting
mind in terms of matter, you must interpret the
whole process of physical evolution in terms of that
in ,vhich it culminates, that is, mind. Here first we
see what it all meant and ,vhither it ,vas all tending.
Thus are we led to see the quality of spirit, that is,
mind and purpose, in the first beginnings of the
material world. That is, in some sense, we are led
to believe in God.
1\1. Henri Bergson is no doubt at many points open
to criticism. But he seems to me to have given
effective expression to a set of ideas which are des-
tined to dominate. "I see in the whole evolution
of life on our planet a crossing of matter by a creative
consciousness, an effort to set free, by force of
ingenuity and invention, something which in the
animal still remains imprisoned, and is only finally
released ,vhen we reach man." I
I think it lTIUst be said that in the fundalnental

1 The argument will be found in Pringle Pattison's book just
referred to, cap. viii, and in many other recent thinkers.
2 See 4"lind Energy (L'Energie Spirituelle), by H. Bergson, trans.
by Prof. H. \Vildon Carr (:\Iacmillan, 1920), p. 18, cf. p. 25.

60 GROUNDS O
" BELIEF IN GOD
conflict between materialism-which would explain
spirit in terms of matter, because the material appears
before the spiritual and the spiritual emerges out of
it-and the spiritual interpretation of nature-,vhich
insists that the orderly evolution which ends in
spiritual beings also presupposes spirit and spiritual
purpose-in that philosophical conflict materialism
has been shown to be untenable. I think it is true
to sa y further that in the two generations full of
constant discussion which have now passed since
Danvin's Origin of Species appeared, the idea that the
,vorld of organized life can be accounted for by
nothing but "natural selection" and "sexual
selection" acting upon the material supplied by
chance variations has become less and less probable. 1
Grant to these agencies all the force they can be
allo,ved to have had, it seems impossible to account
for progressive evolution of living fonns unless some
sort of direction, some sort of organic tendency to
become this or that, is assumed in nature-,vhich
suggests irresistibly a progressive purpose in the
world of living things, ,vhich has found for the
present its culmination and interpretation in man.
In fact, ,ve are driven back for our interpretation of
nature upon the principle first clearly enunciated by
Aristotle that the essence cf anything, or its real
meaning, is only luanifest ,,,,hen it has reached its full
gro""th. We are to interpret the beginning in the
light of the end; not the end in the light of the
beginning. 1
I For an nccour.1t of the present standing of the doctrine of evolu
tion, see Thomson and Geddes's admirable little volume Evolution
in the Home University Library.
2 Cf. Halda.ne's Reign of Relativity, p. 254. "The higher is the
e:xpla.nation of the lower, and not the lower of the higher." He is
speaking of the Greek philosopherFi.

'l'HE SUPRE1tIACY OF
IAN 61
Moreover, it does not appear to be at all the case
that the scientific doctrine of the world-for aU the
length of its vast epochs and all the extension of its
infinite spaces in ,vhich man appears but as a monlent
and a speck-has in any ,yay really dethroned man
from his position of supremacy in the visible order as
the climax and consummation (so far) of creation. 1
What intelligent beings there may be in other worlds
or spheres of being, into ,vhich ,ve cannot penetrate,
and ho,v much superior to man-" thrones, domina-
tions, virtues, princedoms, powers" -our science
cannot tell. It must frame its conceptions on ,,,,hat
it kno,vs. And ,vithin that sphere of possible kno,v-
ledge it is in man first and in man only that vast
nature finds its interpretation, because here only can
its large meaning and content be understood, here
only can its general law and tendency be appreciated,
here only is one who can co-operate with it by
intelligence and will, and by co-operation fashion it
in a measure to his purpose.
But this "natural religion "-the vision of God in
nature to ,vhich the poets and philosophers and
artists and moralists open our eyes, and which, with
their help, we can nlake our o,vn-is to most of us a
very unsatisfying religion. It suggests to those who
have lived in the Christian tradition some urgent
questions
Thus, (1) this God ,vho is "the ,visdom
and spirit of the universe," the Truth and Beauty and
Righteousness ,vhich I can contemplate and with
,vhich I can, in a measure, enter into communion, is
1 Cf. Pringle Pattison, The Idea of God, pp. 28, 82-3, 110-11. He
points out that if Kant depreciated the old argument from design
in the sphere of physical nature, he also restored the a.rgument from
design by his recognition of moral values as
upreme, and his
theory of the universe as " a realm of ends."

II R .RY ST. MA
Y'S COLLEGE

62 GROUNDS OF BELIEF IN GOD
He (if I may speak of "He" and "Him ") personal?
"'''hile I seek to know Hin1, does He kno,v me and
love me and respond to me? Ought I to tremble
before Him as my personal Sovereign and Judge,
awful in His righteousness? And through such fear
of the Lord can I learn to love Him and trust Him as
my Father? ·
Can He hear my prayers and help me in my
troubles? Can He take specific and positive action
on my behalf and on behalf of hUlnanity? Or is
it really only certain gracious aspects of nature ,vhich
I am abstracting from the whole and calling God,
while all the time the Absolute, the ,vhole, the
ultimate force and energy of all things, remains
inscrutable and ambiguous?
Again, (2) I call God "the ,visdom and spirit of
the universe," but does He only gradually realize
Himself in the world and (if the words have any
meaning) come to the knO"\vledge of Himself in man ?
Is He thus as dependent on the world for expression
of Himself as the world is on Him? Is He simply
the ,vorld, as it ,vere, viewed from within? Or, on
the other hand, does He transcend the world, free
and perfect in Himself, before ever the world was,
its Creator and its Lord ?
Once again, (3) if He is the ground and source of
all things, evil as well as good, the ground and source
of the whole universe which in its main bulk seems
so morally indifferent, can He be Himself pure
goodness? Is it possible to believe that the spirit of
the ,y hole is righteousness and love ?
Then when we turn from God to ourselves, other
urgent questions arise. We find ourselves intensely
conscious of moral freedom only in part realized, but
conscious also of being bound as links in endless

INADEQUACY OF PHILOSOPHY 63
chains of cause and effect, in soul as ,veIl as in body,
with the whole of nature. Thus (4) is my sense of
freedom a reality, or is it at the last analysis an
illusion? And is the God ,vhom I seek and seem
to find in nature, a really fre
. creative spirit, or simply
a name for certain aspects of an endless necessary
process? Again, (5) I am conscious of personality
and freedom in myself, such as the experience of my
present life stimulates but also oppresses. Is this
spiritual consciousness, so thwarted here, the pledge
and assurance of an immortal life in God and with
God where it can find its realization ?
These are momentous questions indeed. We kno,v
in a measure the answer which the Christian Faith
gives to them, on the ground of a personal revelation
of Himself believed to have been given by God
through His prophets and His Son. But apart from
any postulate of divine self-revelation, what answer
can the brooding mind of man, by its eager search,
discover to such questions? Now, it must be
admitted that the ans';
ers of our philosophers and
wise men and poets-apart from those who have
believed the Christian revelation and built boldly
upon it-have been extraordinarily vacillating and
alnbiguous. For instance, the great Greek masters
seem hardly to have asked themselves the question
about divine personality which seems to us so impor-
tant. It was indeed the spirit Qf Christianity which
first made the question of personality in God and in
man real and urgent 1; and it was Christian philo-
1 Cf. Haldane, Reign oj Relativity, p. 260, "Where Hellenistic
reflection remained least complete, etc. . . . It did not take sufficient
account of the infinite value belonging to human personality, humble
as well as great. That was where it laid itself open to the criticism
of Christianity, a criticism which subsequent reflection by degrees
assimilated and found justified."

64 GROUNDS OF BELIEF IN GOD
sophy which first found it necessary to devise a
special word to signify it. The greatest philosophers,
on the whole, are content to think of God as an
object of intellectual contemplation rather than as
a person who knows us, loves us, and helps us.
Certainly, again, ,ve shall find no satisfaction, but
rather definite discouragement, if we address such
urgent questions as our religious needs suggest to
the ,visdom of the remoter East. In Europe, after
the decadence of Greek philosophy, there is a period
of a thousand years when the philosophers of the
Catholic world accepted among their premises the
doctrines of the Christian faith and philosophized on
the assumption of their truth. But since modern
philosophy began its course ,vith Descartes and
Spinoza, on a basis of free thinking ,vithout regard to
the authority of any Church, there has been indeed
an intense application of the deepest thinking to
these pro blems, but, so far as the answer to these
questions of ours is concerned, with singularly
vacillating and ambiguous result. Thus Descartes
still, like a scholastic, " proves " the existence of God
as the eternal, perfect, and personal Creator, distinct
from all His creatures; but for his greater successor,
Spinoza, God is simply the one eternal substance,
indistinguishable from nature, whom indeed it is
our highest intellectual joy to love, but ,vhom we
cannot conceive of as loving us, or as willing and
doing particular things, or as in any respect what
we call personal, without His ceasing to be God, the
universal substance. Thus while Spinoza has been
called the God-intoxicated thinker, he was excom-
municated by the Jewish community to which he
belonged, and, not without some excuse, spoken of as
an atheist. Indeed indecision about questions, ,vhich

THE GOD OF PHILOSOPHY 65
to minds coloured by the Christian tradition seem
vital, haunts modern philosophy. l\Ir. Clement
Webb, who himself argues strongly for personality in
God, admits 1 the general reluctance of philosophers
to affirm it. They seem always falling back to a
position akin to that of the Greeks. Even so strong
a contemporary theist as Dr. Pringle Pattison,
though he labours to assert the divine transcendence,
does not really succeed in doing so, I and he seems to
think, with Spinoza, that divine perfection excludes
all choice of particular things or persons. S
Then, as regards the character of God, philosophy
seems to leave us with a perpetual and insoluble con-
tradiction between the postulate of a perfect good
God, made by the healthy moral consciousness of
mankind, and the sort of conception which this
mixed world of good and evil seems to suggest of
a spirit in whom (or in ,vhich) good and evil can lie
together as simply necessary modes of being; ,vhich
line of thought again suggests or coincides ,vith the
philosophy which, at the last resort, makes human
freedom and responsibility an illusion. Nor again
do our philosophers give us any clear ans,ver to the
question of personal immortality.
No doubt this or that man of vigorous and confident
intellect may seem to see his ,vay through these
tremendous questions to a solution. He may be
able to proclaim the verdict of reason in favour of
divine personality, divine goodness, and humall
freedom and immortality. But for most of us, if
we rigorously try to shut out from our minds all

1 Webb's God and Personality, p. 110.
2 See appendix at the end of the chapter.
8 See his essay on "'.rranscendenco and Immanence," p. 14 in the
volume entitled The Spirit (l\:lacmillan, 1919).
6

66 GROUNDS OF BELIEF IN GOD
the light ,y hich can onl y be ours as believers in
the divine revelation of ,vhich the Bible is the
record, it must be confessed that grcat nature,
for all its divine qualities, remains an impenetrable
mystery-a sphinx who gives no ans,vers to im-
portunate questions which we cannot but continue
to ask.
We shall have to return later from another point of
view u pOll these mom ento us questions and consider them
more at leisure. But it is concerning this other point
of view-that is, the point of view of divine revelation
-that I want now to speak. St. Paul assures us
that the nations of men ,verc put into the ,vorld "that
they should seek God, if haply they might feel after
him, and find him," 1 and that "the living God left
not himself without witness,". and that His
invisible attributes, "His everlasting power and
divinity," are since the creation of the world" clearly
seen, being pcrceived through the things that are
made.'" This is substantiated in experience. The
universe warrants or compels, as we have seen, belief
in God, in some sort. But St. Paul also assures us
that "in the ,vise providence of God, the world
through its philosophy was not able to kno,v God,"
and that it ,vas God's good pleasure, in consequence,
to disclose His real mind and purpose through the
message of the preacher which the philosophers
ridicule 4-that is, by a real and effective self-
revelation. Else,vhere the Bible tells us, in memor-
able phrases which haunt our memory when we are
wearied ,vith philosophical argunlent, that we " can-
not by searching find out God." I These two kinds
1 Acts :xvii. 27. :I Acts :xiv. 17. : Romans i. 20.
, This is, I think, a. fair paraphrase of 1 Cor. i. 21.
I Job xi. 7.

REVELATION AND REASON 61
of statements seem to me to correspond with the
facts. We are bound to search for God with all the
energy of our reason, and in a measure ,ve find Hin1 ;
but at the same time He baffies our search. It carries
us a certain way, and then leaves us, disappointed and
disheartened. We discover that God is, but not what
He is. But both the eager search and the discovery,
and, on the other hand, the disappointment and the
failure, may, we feel, both be parts of a movement
of God in us which is to be met by a corresponding
movement of God, if I may so speak, from without
or from above, to reveal Himself in much more
satisfying fullness.
Now, no doubt this idea of positive divine revelation
has often been so presented, both in its relation to
reason and in its relation to natural religions, as to
be very difficult of acceptance. Faith in divine
revelation has been set in opposition to reason. The
merit of faith has been represented as if it lay in
triumphing over reason. But this kind of represen-
tation may be simply a misrepresentation. It may
be the case that revelation supplements but in no
way contradicts the conclusions and intimations of
" unassisted" reason. Perhaps there is no real
justification for setting revelation and reason in
opposition at all. What I think is amazing is ho,v
little the modern intellectual ,vorld, ,vhich claims to
be, and appears to be, seeking God- with all seriousness
-how little it faces the question of the reality of
positive divine self-revelation. \Ve are bound to
think of a self-revealing God in some sense-self-
revealing in nature as a whole-in its la,v, in its
order, in its beauty-self-revealing with extraordinary
intensity in conscience, and moreover with extra-
ordinarily different degrees of intensity. It is face

68 GROUNDS OF BELIEF IN GOD
to face ,vith this universal self-revelation of God that
there has arisen that general consciousness of God
'v hich ,ve have been considering, with all its occasional
clearness of vision and also with all its profound and
disturbing uncertainties. Why, then, should not
this process of self-disclosure on God's part have been
along one particular line intensified and clarified so
as to become a real illumination? Why, moreover,
should not one race of men have been the channel
of this fuller self-disclosure of God to the whole
\vorld, as other races have been of other good things
,vhich, when matured, have become universal in
application? 1 Of course all this involves a conscious
providence in history-a real personality in God.
But ,ve do not, for the most part, feel that we have
any a priori reason justifying the exclusion of the
possibility of a particular providence and a personal
God. Is it not our duty at least to examine the
question of the reality of a divine revelation which
certain religions press upon us? Our memories are
haunted by Plato's pathetic ,vords, put into the
mouth of Simmias in the Phaedo, where the question
of the immortality of the soul is under discussion.
" It seems to me, Socrates, as to you also, I fancy,
that it is very difficult, if not impossible, in this present
life to have clear kno,vledge concerning such subjects;
but that, on the other hand, it is the mark of a faint-
hearted spirit to desist from examining all that
is said about them in every ,yay, or to abandon

1 More is said later on the point, ßnd on the whole relation of
special revelation to the general reason. See also Dr. William
Temple's Mens Oreatrix (l'tlacmillan), the prologue. The con-
trasted ideas of struggling reason and illuminating revelation is put
with extraordinary impressiveness at the end of J ames
Iozley's
essay on Blanco White: see his collected Essays (Rivingtons), vol. H.

THE TRANSCENDENCE OF GOD 69
the search so long as there is any chance of
light anywhere. For on such subjects one ought
to secure one of two things, either to learn or
discover the truth, or, if this is impossible, at least
to get the best of human argument (words) and
the hardest to refute, and relying on this as on a
raft, to sail the perilous sea of life, unless one were
able, more securely and less perilously, to make
one's journey upon a safer vessel-upon some divine
word." 1
Let us, then, at least contemplate the possibility
of a particular divine self-disclosure, gradually
maturing, and finally becoming universal. Let us
consent at least to face the evidence and "to go
where the argument leads us."

Appendix on Dr. A. Seth Pringle Pattison's article
entitled" Immanence or Transcendence," in The Spirit-a
volume of essays edited by Canon Streeter (l\lacmillan,
1919).

It is a very interesting question ,vhether-quite apart
from the acceptance of a positive self-disclosure of God,
such as the Christian Church believes to have been given
through the prophets and by Christ the Son of God-it is
possible to arrive at any secure intellectual hold upon a
transcendent God-upon a God, that is, who, in some
sense prior to the slowly developing universe, existed and
exists eternally, self-conscious and self-determined,
holding in His eternal being and mind the law and
purpose and power of all the slow development. It is
quite plain that this is the God whom the Christian
Church has believed in. It has believed in God the
eternal, who before the world was, was alive, , the living
God,' self-complete and perfect, and who freely of His
goodwill created all that is.
There is, of course, profound intellectual difficuJty-
I Plato, Phaedo, 85 O.D.

LIBRARY ST. MARY'S COLLEGE

70 GROUNDS OF BELIEF IN GOD
amounting, I think, to impossibility-in conceiving of
such an eternal, living, personal God as a solitary monad,
seeing that all the elements of conscious life, whether will
or knowledge or love, involve relationship-an object of
,viII, an object of knowledge, an object of love-and an
eternal and perfect Spirit therefore involves an eternal
and perfect object. But when, long after Biblical times, the
Church became conscious of this intellectual problem, it
had already been long familiar with the idea of the trinity
of persons in the unity of God and found in this belief the
solution of the intellectual difficulty . We must be
careful to note that the idea or doctrine of the Trinity had
not been originally formulated 'with any reference to the
intellectual problem. It had been formulated as an
attempt to put into words the Church's new experience of
the Son, Jesus Christ, and of the Holy Spirit as persons
in some sense to be ranked with God, the Father, without
violation of His unity. But later it found in this trini-
tarian creed the solution of the intellectual problem in
this n1anner-God could be conceived of as eternally
alive, with the full life of will and knowledge and love,
prior to and apart from creation, because His own eternal
being contained in itself the necessary relationships-the
fello'wship of the Father with the Eternal Word or Son and
with the Holy Spirit. In this eternal fellowship the full
activity of life was possible. All that was to be created in
time-" whatever has come into being "-alreadyexisted
in eternal counterpart in the 'Vord or Son 1; and ,vhatever
life there be in the world was already active and conscious
in the Eternal Spirit.
But all this conception ,vhich is due to the belief in 8
positive revelation must at present be ignored, whether
'\ve hold it for true or no. At any rate its grounds are not
yet within our purview in this enquiry. The question
now is: Can the unassisted inteIlect of man attain by
speculation on the universe or out of its own resources any
secure hold upon the transcendent God ? Let it be granted

1 This is the interpretation given in early days to St. John i. 3-4,
R.V. marg., "Without him was not anything made. That which
hath been made was life in him." But I doubt the punctuation and
interpretation of the particular passage.

PRINGLE PATTISON

71

that it can attain to the secure conviction that in some real
sense God exists as " the spirit of the universe " or " the
soul of the world." But the world, as we know, is not
static. It is a world of gradual process and evolution. In
it we see first force, then life, then, first fully in man, self-
conscious mind and will. This suggests to us the con-
ception of Henri Bergson (apparently lying in his mind
side by side ,vith another conception) of an unconscious
spirit of l
fe striving to express itself in the material world
and finally becoming conscious of itself in man. Is this the
only idea of God which nature suggests-an un con -
scious mind or purpose (if the ,vords have any intelligible
meaning), gradually gaining consciousness and self-ex-
pression in man? But the difficulty of such a con-
ception is enormous. 1 The unity of the world is so
close-knit that there is no room for two principles, ll1atter
and life, such as Bergson's language might sometimes
suggest. It is one force (or God), and one only, which there
expresses itself alike in things material and spiritual.
And order, which presupposes mind, belongs to the
material universe prior to the emergence there of life or
mind. Can we then conceive of a cosmic !tlind or Spirit,
which is unconscious or semi -conscious till it becomes
conscious of itself in man? I cannot give reality to the con-
ception. And the question I am now asking is, Does Dr.
Pringle Pattison help us in this difficulty? Does he suc-
ceed in giving reality to the idea of the transcendent God?
1. No doubt he seeks to affirm the transcendence of
God. He is plainly not satisfied with the idea, appearing
first in Spinoza, of a God (natura naturans) who has no
will or consciousness in Himself, but only in the finite
spirits who are parts of created nature (natura naturata) :
see Idea of God, p. 255, and the Essay on which we are
commenting.
2 . Yet he plainly and constantly denies any such idea
of personal self-completence in God as would present Him
as independent of His creation, or prior to creation, as
He is presented in the Christian view. On the con-
trary, he insists that the creation is necessary to God and
co-eternal. It is only in creation that God realizes
Himself (Essay, p. 18;
Iika of God, lect. xvi),
1 See further, pp. 1
8-53,

72 GROUNDS OF BELIEF IN GOD
8. l\loreover he quite clearly can attach no meaning to
the existence of material things apart from conscious
beings (Essay, p. 16). Consequently" there is in strictness
no creation-no finite universe at all-till spirits are
created" (or" begotten") (p. 17). It is only, therefore,
in finite spirits that God can realize Himself. This, again,
he makes quite clear.
4. But finite spirits appear first, in the world as we know
it, in man and as the last stage of an age-long develop-
ment. How then does Dr. Pringle Pattison escape the con-
clusion that first in man does God become conscious of
Himself or alive ,vith the life of will and knowledge and
love? In what sense can he talk of an eternal or
transcendent life or consciousness of God? In no sense,
so far as I can see. I suppose it is because he feels the
difficulty that he throws out the suggestion of finite spirits
other than man; " multitudes of self-conscious spirits may
exist" in other ,,,"orlds (p. 21), and they" may vastly
surpass mankind as ,ve know it." Well, the Christian,
through the assurance of Christ, may have grounds for
believing this to be true, and may reasonably take it
as a fact into his calculations. But-apart from the
belief in a positive and supernatural disclosure through
Christ of spiritual facts which would be otherwise
unknown to man, which Dr. Pringle Pattison does
not, I gather, find an acceptable idea, and ,vhich at
any rate is not at present in question-this suggestion
of unseen hosts of spirits is purely mythological and
hypothetical. Certainly it cannot be relied upon. The
eternal must somehow, he tells us, find room for the
tin1e series. It must include it. Does it not, in Dr.
Pringle Pattison's philosophy, depend upon it? Is his
eternal anything more than the idea of creation viewed
as completed? I do not see ho,v he can substantiate
his transcendent God. I think he remains in effect
with Spinoza.
Moreover, if his hypothesis be granted, these hosts of
conscious spirits either emerged, like men, at a certain
stage in a long development-in which case the problem
is simply duplicated and not solved-or they are co-
eternal with God and co-essential-in which case we
appear to have the foundation of a pluralism or

WHERE HE FAILS

73

polytheism capable of strange developments and utterly
alien to Dr. Pringle Pattison's monotheism.
Apart then from this speculation in the unknowable,
where for Dr. Pringle Pattison is there ground for belief
in any transcendent God eternally conscious and alive?

.

CHAPTER IV

THE QUESTION OF REVELATION

THIS, then, is the question: Has the Divine l\Iind or
Spirit whom we discern by the light of reason hidden
in the ,vorld-hidden in that its nature and character
are involved in such obscurity-has it, or has He,
taken action, like a person, on His side to disclose or
reveal Himself to those " who are seeking after God,
if haply they may feel after Him and find Him" ?
No doubt the basal assumption or fundamental
faith on which alone any scientific or philosophical or
religious view of the universe can be built up is the
assumption that our reason can be trusted; and there

fore any alleged self-revelation of God ,vhich should
prove to be inconsistent with the requirements of
reason could only increase the bewilderment of mind
in which ,ve already find ourselves in view of the
obscurity of nature. But on all showing the human
reason is partial and inlperfect; and a self-disclosure
of God is easily conceived ,vhich should not violate
but augment the light of reason-should supplement
it and supply sonle satisfaction and response to its
urgent questions and ignorant prayers. There is
to
day in most men's minds a profound and easily
justified scepticism on all abstract dogmas of philo-
sophers as to what is or is not possible or believable.
74

THE POSSIBILITY OF REVELATION 75
In this our temper contrasts markedly with the temper
of the scholastic period or the period of Descartes and
Spinoza. Science has proved so many things true
which in the abstract appeared inconceivable, and the
abstract dogmatists have proved themselves singu-
larly fallible. Thus we may peremptorily refuse to
decide a priori that the supreme reason or God cannot
directly communicate His mind and purpose to the
reason and conscience of men. The opposite antici-
pation is at least as tenable. l\Ioreover, the facts of
the moral conscience among men-to which the
Right appears regularly, especially in the noblest of
our race, as the divine will and purpose, enjoining
obedience and correspond.ence on our part, and in a
measure self-revealing-and the nearly universal
popular belief that certain individuals are in a special
sense inspired by God or by a God-these facts of
common experience sho,v us human nature in the
broad ready to recognize divine self-revelation.
Unhindered therefore by any prohibitory dogma
of the reason, we may approach the real question, which
is one of fact. The religion of Israel, on which
Christianity and, in a different degree, l\Iohammedan-
ism are based, claims that such a revelation has been
given. It has persuaded the whole Western, and in
a sense the Mohammedan, world over long centuries
of the truth of its claim. And, what is much more
important, the strength of our .morality has been
drawn from the belief in a self-revealing God. The
belief has obvious power. It has apparently put man
in touch with reality. Thus the claim deserves at
least the attention of every rational man. What the
admission of this claim involves will be matter for
further consideration. Let us first of all, as simply
and objectively as possible, consider the claim of

76 THE QUESTION OF REVELATION
positive revelation made by the Hebrew religion,
and the grounds on which its rests for us to-day.
What, then, precisely is the point to be considered?
To restrict the area of enquiry, and to remove it from
the region of doubtful questions, let us take the period
of the prophets of Israel whose ,vritings remain to us,
beginning ,vith Amos, about 760 B.C. or earlier, and
ending some three hundred years or more later with
Malachi.
A word must be said in explanation of these limits.
No one can read the earliest prophet whose ,vritings
remain to us, Amos, ,vithout seeing that the founda-
tion of the prophetic teaching had already been laid
before his day. He can apparently take for granted
that the God of Israel-Jah,veh-is the one and only
God, the Creator of heaven and earth,1 the just Judge
of all mankind, perfect in righteousness. He and all
the prophets would repudiate the idea that they ,vere
innovators. They would no doubt refer themselves
back to the time of God's first redemption of His
people from Egypt, and to the covenant given through
Moses, or to an earlier period still. I believe that we
must take it to be true that the essential features of
the prophetic doctrine do date from l\loses, and that
the popular Jahweh-worship, against which the pro-
phets of our period protest, was really a corruption
and degradation-a falling away from what had been
delivered to the fathers of Israel. Nevertheless the
question of what exactly the religion of Abraham was,
or what the original Mosaic deposit was, is a very com-
plicated question involved in all the uncertainties
which surround documents whose date cannot be put
near to the events which they describe. Whereas

1 Amos v. 8-9.

SETTING THE QUESTION 77
from Amos to Malachi we are on the clear ground of
history, and we shall be assuming nothing that is
doubtful in considering the plain facts of their doc-
trine. Also the date ,vhen the supposed divine
comnlunications began makes no real difference to the
argument. Whether it began with Moses or whether
,vith Amos, the question of its source remains sub-
stantially the same.
As to the later limit which I have chosen, it is
probable that some written prophecies, such as Joel
and the later part of Zechariah, date some hundred
years later than Malachi, and it is certain (in my
judgement) that the book of Daniel dates some three
centuries later than ]\lalachi. And the prophetic
spirit is conspicuously to be found not only in the
Prophets, but in Psalms and Wisdom literature and
later apocalypses. These again contain fresh elements
of teaching, which are incorporated in the Jewish
authoritative tradition as it was received and per-
petuated in the primitive Christian Church, e.g. the
doctrine of the Wisdom of God immanent in nature,
the fuller doctrine of the angels, and the clear
assertion of the resurrection. But I am not prepared
to argue that these elements of the Jewish tradition
cannot be accounted for partly as inevitable develop-
Inents and partly as incorporations from Greek and
Persian sources, once granted the fundamental basis
of prophetic doctrine.
These considerations have led to the choice of the
limits Amos to Malachi. All that I want is to be
found there and nothing that is fairly disputable.
During these 300 years, then, there ,vas a continuous
succession of prophets whose ,vritings are preserved
to us. There are obscure passages in these books
which for our present purpose we can wholly ignore,

78 THE QUESTION OF REVELATION
and there are passages assigned, perhaps rightly, to
a later date '\vith which we are not concerned. What
is important is undisputed and is plain, so that he
that runs may read. It makes its impression only if
we read it continuously.!
Here, then, 'w'e find a succession of wonderful men,
mostly conscious of profound unpopularity in their
contemporary world, who nevertheless, even in the
face of the most determined hostility of courts and
people, delivered a message which we feel to be self-
consistent and to involve the same great principles
throughout, about God-His nature, His will, His
purposes-and about human nature-its dignity, its
responsibility, and its sin; a message ,vhich they
declare, with the fullest conviction, to be derived not
from their o'\yn reasoning or speculation, nor from
tradition I (though they ,vould have indignantly
repudiated the idea that they '\vere its first recipients),
nor from any external source at all, but from God,
the God of Israel, speaking in their own souls, so
intensely and clearly that there could be no mistake
about it. Let us listen to some typical utterances :
U I ,vas no prophet, neither was I a prophet's son;
but I was an herdman, and a dresser of sycomore
trees: and the Lord took me from following the flock,
and the Lord said unto me, Go, prophesy unto my
people Israel. Now therefore hear the word of the
Lord." I

1 The best assistance in doing this is The Hebrew Prophet8, by
Woods and Powell {Oxford Press}-four handy little volumes wit.h
introduction, text, and very brief but sufficient notes.
I Their relation to earlier revelation may be co:npared to that of
St. Paul. St. Paul was not the first recipient of "the truth as it is in
Jesus," but he held it, and his commission to teach it, "neither
from men nor through men."
a Amos vii. 14.

THE PROPHETS 79
" But I truly am full of power by the spirit of the
Lord, and of judgement, and of might, to declare unto
Jacob his transgression, and to Israel his sin." 1
"lVline heart within me is broken, all my bones
shake; I am like a drunken man, and like a man
,vhom wine hath overcome; because of the Lord, and
because of His holy ,vords. . . . Is not my word like
as fire? saith the Lord; and like a hammer that
breaketh the rock in pieces ? " I
We notice that they are acutely conscious of the
contrast between their own feelings and ideas on the
one hand, and on the other the purpose and mind of
God who constrains them. This is vividly presented
,vhere the prophet holds conversations with God,
represents to God his Olvn feelings, questions and
complains, and is ans,vered. 3 These prophets are
clearly conscious of two distinct currents or forces
within them-the current of their own feelings, and
the overmastering pressure of God who possesses
them, making His mind and will articulate to them.
Such passages recur constantly. The prophets,
then, because they are conscious of being thus even
violently dealt ,vith and possessed, claimed to utter
with supreme authority a word or message from God
to man. The content of this message is, on the ""hole,
quite clear in its final outcome. It is a Inessage
,vhich proclaims God as intensely personal and moral,
as the one and only God, the absolute creator and
sustainer and judge of all that is, almighty in the sense
that no other God or external power exists to restrain
Him. It proclaims Him in unmistakable terms for

1 Micah Hi. 8. I Jer. xxiii. 9-29.
a See Amos vii. 2-9 and 15, viii. 1-2; Isa. vi. 5-12,
xi. 2-10,
xxii. 4-14; Jer. i. 6-14, iv. 10, :xiv. 7 to end, xv. 10-21, etc. Cf.
Sanday, Inspiration (Longmans, 1893), p. 148.

80 THE QUESTION OF REVELATION
a practical purpose, not, that is, ,vith a view to the
satisfaction of metaphysical enquiries, but for the
sole purpose of making His people understand that
there is no manner of fellowship with Him possible
except by conformity to His character, that is, by
goodness, social and individual, by "doing justly,
and loving mercy,-and walking humbly ,vith God."l
I t proclaims the responsibility of man as a free being
and his awful power to th,vart God by his pride and
,vilfulness, and to throw His ,vorld into confusion, in
Isaiah's tremendous phrase, " to make God serve with
his sins." I It assumes that God does not over the
long course of this world's history intend to remove
man's liberty thus to thwart His purpose; but it
declares God's intention to judge and overthro\v one
by one every structure and device of human pride
and wilfulness, and finally to vindicate Hinlself in
His \vhole creation. That is " the day of the Lord."
Meanwhile, His prophets are His mouthpiece to make
His character and ,vill and purpose known, and to
call on those who have ears to hear to correspond
and co-operate with Him, that is, to stand for
righteousness and truth in evil days.
And it was upon this revelation of God, given through
the prophets, that in later days Jesus unmistakably
took His stand. After a long period of what in onc
sense was the victory of the prophetic teaching since
the Captivity, and in other sense turned out to be its
eclipse '-after a long period during ,vhich there \vere
1 Micah vi. 8. I Isa. xliii. 24.
I By the victory of the prophets after the Captivity I mean that
their whole teaching was formally accepted. There was no more
idolatry or tendency to idolatry on the part of the people. And
the whole ceremonial CUltU8 was reorganized-following the teaching
of Ezekiel-so as to express the ethical principles of the prophets.
This was a great victory as the result of a divine judgement. On the

JESUS CHRIST 81
no prophets-Jesus of Nazareth, follo,ving on John
the Baptist, renewed the prophetic message, infinitely
deepening and broadening it, but in no respect
altering its fundamental character. About the relation
of Jesus to the prophets, ho,vever, more ,vill have to
be said later. Here it is enough to call attention to
what is indisputable, that no representation of the
teaching of Jesus Christ can make any pretence to
truth which fails to recognize that He stood upon
the foundation of the prophets, and that the civiliza-
tion of Christendom, in its ,vhole moral and religious
fabric, stands ,vith Jesus Christ upon that basis.
'The message of the prophets made, and still makes,
a profound difference to mankind. It impinged upon
the human soul and conscience in a quite new way,
,vith ne,v motives, ne,v fears, new hopes, ne,v aspira-
tions, new possibilities. This monotheism of the
prophets created a new type of character. Judged
by its effect, it is markedly different from the religion
of the philosophers, whether ancient or modern. And
that because its ideas are different. It claims, in
fact, to introduce into human experience a new source
of information about God of the most important kind,
such as never could have been derived from the
consideration of nature. If the claim of the prophets
to speak the word of the Lord is a true claim, the
philosopher (as ,veIl as the ordinary lllan) has got

other hand, prophecy gave way to law, and law tended to formalism.
So the later Judaism tended to U make the word of God of none
effect by its tradition." Anyone of the old prophets who had been
" raised up " to visit earth again when John the Baptist began his
mission would have been profoundly disappointed with the results
of the victory of the prophetic teaching four hundred years before.
He would have joined John in his denunciation of U the offspring
of vipers." He would have seen a new idolatry in their misunder-
standing of the character of God.
,.,
.

LI
R

..h.

ST./v1Af\ V'S C

LLEGE

ð2 TI-IE QUESTION OF REVELATION
the lnaterial with which he has to deal immensely
enlarged. Athanasius, in a striking phrase, described
the He bre\v prophets as "the sacred school of the
kllo\vledge of God and of the spiritual life for all
mankind." 1 If there really ,vas such a divine educa-
tion of mankind of ,vhich the Hebre,v prophets were
the instruments, ,ve. nlust put them, ,vith regard to
religion, in a position analogous to that which we
cOlllmonly assign to the Greeks in philosophy or art,
and to the Romans in adnlÍnistration and law, but
profoundly different in respect of the source of their
authority and the method by which they gained their
assurance-the method of positive revelation, given
and received.
It seems to me that the intellectual world of to-day
is studiously refusing to face exactly this question.
But the peremptory fornl in ,vhich the question
presents itself can be realized by any man who likes
to read the prophets-to read and to ponder the vivid
accounts ,,'hich the prophets give us of their commis-
sions,' and in general their intense experiences of
the dealings of God with them-experiences from
which it is not too much to say the world gained a
ne,v spiritual life and a wholly new moral power.
\Vere these real experiences-that is, experiences
,vhich brought them into contact with reality, external
to and independent of themselves, experiences of God
forcing Himself upon them ,vith a message which could
be made articulate in human words and intelligible
to human hearts and minds ?
Some of the ways in ,vhich an attempt is made to
explain or explain away the prophetic experiences so

1 De Incarnatione, 12; cf. the noble preface to Ewald's History oj
Israel.
:. lsa. vi.; Jerem. i.; Ezek. H.-Hi. Amos vii. 14.

THE RISE OF PROPHECY 88
that they shall not bear the conclusions which they
appear to bear, if taken as veridical, ,ve must with
all anxious impartiality seek to examine. But to
obviate in advance certain current misconceptions,
,ve must first take special note of some facts concern-
ing the origin, nature, and progressive character of
the prophetic teaching.
1. It had its origin alnidst phenomena familiar to
all religions and especially to the Semitic religions
around it. St. Chrysostom 1 boldly declared that all
the elen1ents of the Jewish ceremonial la,v-" the
sacrifices and the cleansings and the ne,v moons and
the ark and the temple itself had their origin from
heathen grossness." The same thing is true about
prophecy in its external aspects. Almost all nations,
and in particular the nations \vith whom the Hebrews
,vere acquainted and to whom they were akin, had a
special class of "professionals," priests or seers or
diviners, whose supposed science enabled them, by
various methods, to ascertain the will of the god of
the nation and to claim his guidance. A certain
ethical effect may be found in some of these religious
institutions, as, for instance, in the Greek oracles,
and we need not stay to discuss ,vhether there was
by their means a really divine influence at work.
Let us grant it. But in the main the influence of
these "natural religions" was not ethical. Es-
pecially the religions which surro
ded Israel, whether
the religion of the local Canaanite Baalim and Ashto-
reths, or the religions of the national gods, such as
Chemosh the l\Ioabite god, were not ethical. 'hey

1 St. Chrys., Hom. in Matt. vi. 3, P.G. lvii. col. 66. ."':The patristio
recognition of the earthly origin of the religion of the J ewe in its
ma.terial elements ha.s boon generally ignored in the orthodox
tra.dition.

4 THE QUESTION OF REVELATION
were at their root nature ,vorships, and often" orships
of the productive and reproductive po\vers of nature.
Thus as nature seeIn<; to be indifferent to morality, so
nature ,vorships are non-moral or humoral. It is
surprising to most of us to discover to ho,v great an
extent ,ve of the Western ,,"orld o\ve the intimate
association of religipn ,vith morality to the direct or
indirect influence of the special class of He bre\v pro-
phets 'v horn we are considering. Among the people
great and small ,vith \v horn Israel ,vas brought in
contact, religion ,vas profoundly popular. The gods
were taken for granted. The god belonged to his
people and the people to their god. He ,vas not
conceived of as asking of them anything contrary to
their customs. They ,v
re to give him his proper
cultus-his sacrifices and rites-and to avoid all that
annoyed and irritated him. But character and
morality were not among his attributes or his claims.
On the other hand, he belonged to his people and
could be expected to help theIn, and there existed the
class of professionals ,vho kne\v how to find out his
will and disclose it, and ,,,,ho could more or less foretell
what ,vas to happen. So they ""ere to be consulted
by the peoples and their rulers in their difficulties.
Doubtless in some such way by the help of the
priests l\Iesha King of J\loab, contemporary with
Omri King of Israel, whose inscription remains for
us, ascertained the will of Chemosh.

" I am l\Iesha King of l\Ioab. . .. I made this high
place to Chemosh because he has helped me against all
them that attacked me, and has caused me to see my
desire upon all my enemies. Omri King of Israel
oppressed
Ioab long, because Chemosh ,vas angry against
his land. . .. And the I{ing of Israel had built Ataroth.
I attacked the to'wn and took it, and I exterminated all

SEl\IITIC RELIGIONS 85
the men of the to,vn-a pleasing spectacle for Chemosh
and l\Ioab, . . . and I dragged [some others] before the
face of Chemosh. And Chelnosh said to me: Go and take
Nebo from Israel. And I set out by night, and I besieged
that to,vn . . . and I took it and killed all things . . .
for I had vowed them to Ashtar Chemosh. And there
I took the altar hearths [?] of Jehovah and dragged them
before the face of Chemosh. The I(ing of Israel built
J ahash and fortified himself there against me, and
Chemosh drove him before his face . . . and Chemosh
said to me: Go do,vn and fight against Haronaim." 1
Obviously this narrative and its religious tone recall
fan1i1iar features in the Hebre,v books. In fact it is
impossible to read attentively some of the narratives
of the book of Judges, or the books of Samuel, or the
denunciations of the popular religion from the lips of
the prophets, as they sa,v it in being, and not to o,vn
that the popular religion of Israel ,vas much the
same as the religion of the people round about them.
This religion, the religion of Jah,veh, as the people
understood it, ,vas popular and universal. The
people trampled Jahweh's courts in crowds; they
spent lavisWy on the ,V'orship, the sacrifices, and the
incense; they loved the festivals; but plainly they
entertained no idea of any connexion bet,veen their re-
ligion and ,vhat ,ve call morality, individual and social.
Religion in their sense was quite compatible both ,vith
sexual immorality and drunkenness and with social
oppression and fraud and cruelty. It is on this ground
only that the earlier prophets denounce so utterly
the ceremonial CUltu8 as worthless in the sight of
God.- Also the people of Israel, through prophets

1 See Hastings's D. oj B., art. l\Ioabite Stone, vol. iii, p. 407.
2 It is hardly necessary to refer to the famous passages IS8. i. 10-
17, Hos. vi. 6, Amos iv. 4-6, v. 21-7, :\Iicah vi. 6-8, Ps. I. 8-15,
etc. Such denunciations cease with the Captivity. The tone of
the prophets after the Captivity is quite different.

86 THE QUESTION OF REVELATION
and seers, by Urim and Thummim, by sacred pillars,
by ephods, and by the sacred ark, ascertained the
word of J ahweh, much as l\Iesha, the king of l\Ioab,
ascertained the ,viII of Chemosh-that is to say, the
directions ,yhich He ,vas believed to give His people
in their practical concerns, military and personal.
The existence of this sort of J ahweh- religion in Israel
is unmistakable through the period of the Judges and
the early kingdom. It is the religion and the re-
ligious worship ,vhich the later prophets denounce. l In
the main it was Jah,veh-worship, for the Hebre,vs had
on the whole no desire to forsake their national God,
as they understood the matter, either in Israel or in
Judah. They did indeed lapse into the ,vorship of
other gods, and more and more ac; the fierce teaching
of the prophets identified the nanle of Jah,veh ,vith a
tremendous moral claim ,vhich they were not prepared
to accede to. This idolatry the prophets alternately
denounce and ridicule. But in the earlier days,
before the continuous succession of the prophets, the
people in general probably felt very little essential
difference bet,veen Chemosh and Jahweh, or the
religions of Chemosh and J ahweh, or between one Baal

1 See, for a conception of J ahweh a.s in some sense limited to His
own land and peoples, like Chemosh to l\Ioab, Judg. xi. 23-4,
1 Sam. xxvi. 19. For seers and prophets as paid professionals see
1 Sam. ix. 7-8. For music and violell.t motion and mental disturb-
ance as the accompaniment of prophecy see 1 Sam. x. 5-6, 10-13,
xix. 24, Num. xxiv. 4, 2 Kings iii. 15. For divination by Urim
and Thummim, 1 Sam. xiv. 41, [restoring the text according to
the indication of the LXX: "If on me and my son, Jehovah
give Urim, but, if on the people, give Thummim,] 1 Sam. xxviii. 6.
By teraphim and ephod and ark, Judg. xvii. 5, 6, 1 Sam. xxiii. 9-12,
xxx. 7-8,2 Sam. v. 19-23, Josh. xviii. 6-10, Hos. iv. 12 (by stock and
staff), Zech. x. 2. Cf. among the heathen Gen. xliv. 5 (by goblet),
Ezek. xxi. 21 (by arrows and teraphim a.nd liver). By dreams, 1 Sam.
xxviii. 6, Jer. xxiii. 25; by wizards, Lev. xix. 31, Is8. viii. 19. See
list of prohibited methods in Deut. xviii. 10-12, with Driver's notes.

PROPHETS TRUE AND FALSE 87
and another. Such, as we read the earlier records and
the s,veeping denunciations of the prophets, we di
..
cern to have been the popular religion of Israel.
It was in this kind of atmosphere and out of this
tradition that the great moral prophets, whose \vrit-
ings remain to us, emerged. They ,vere fe,v among
many. The mass of the prophets all along, until after
the Captivity the ,vhole prophetic office fell into dis-
repute, 1 retained the old lo,v idea of religion, mixed
,vith mere fraud and avarice. The" true" prophets
habitually denounce them as a corrupt class, mis-
leading the people.- They themselves retain some of.
the characteristics of the "natural" prophets-they
perform symbolic acts for a sign, they see visions, and
one of them (Ezekiel) is notable for going into condi-
tions of trance.' Nevertheless, as compared ,vith the
1 See Zech. xiii. 3-6.
2 Elijah's adversaries appear clearly as prophets of a false and rival
God (1 Kings xviii. 19). But
1icaiah's adversaries claim apparently
to be prophets of Jehovah: 1 Kings xxii., see ver. 24. For denuncia-
tions of the prophets as & class see Hos. ix. 7-8, :l\Iicah iii. 5-11,
Zeph. iii. 4,lsa. xxviii. 7, xxix. 10, Jer. ii. 26, v. 31, xxiii. 15-40(&
very illuminating passage), Ezek. xiii. 15-16. All these passages
imply that the prophets as a class were abandoned men.
a 1 feel that 1 have not the qualifications for writing on the psychical
condition of the prophets. 1 do not see signs of trance conditions
in any of the prophets whom we reckon as the true prophets except
Ezekiel. Job iv. 12-17 and Dan. viii. 18 perha.ps suggest that in
the later period of Jewish lit.erature a trance condition was regarded
as the natural condition for the prophet. All that 1 would insist
upon is that, whatever the physica.l condition of the prophets when
they received their communications, .their minds were intensely
alert and conscious and rational. 'Vhat posseF1sed them did not
annihilate or override their own mental faculties. No one can
read their prophecies and fail +,0 see this. The early Christian
Church (in the }Iontanist controversy) was clearly right in asserting
that in the true succession of prophets the inspiring Spirit did not
destroy but intensified the natural rational faculty of its human
organs. They retain their full personality with its individual char-
acteristics. See The Church and the J.1fin-istry, Appendix H and I,
and references to Bonwetsch there given.

88 THE QUESTION OF REVELATION
popular prophets, they are something 'v holly different.
Their ainl is ,vholly different. Their nlessage is
associated ,vith the clearest mental vision and fullest
consciousness. It speaks out of the moral reason of
the prophet to the nloral reason of the people. If the
prophets ""ere ,vhat they claimed to be, it must be
recognized that Goq was doing through them a ne,v
thing, but that the ne,v thing sprang out of ,vhat was
natural anù racial. And it is, as ,ve have already
recognized, a lnost false method to imagine that,
because some new thing emerged out of something
lo,ver, therefore the lo,ver thing explains the new
birth. It does this in the case of prophecy no more
than physics can explain life or irrational nature
reaSOll. Rather in the ne,v thing we see the explana-
tion of that lower thing out of 'v hich it had its origin,
as Ulan explains nature rather than nature man.
2. In ,vhat sense is it the special function of the
prophets to foretell the future? In a sense this had
been the characteristic fW1ction of the Sen1Ìtic pro-
phets. They were the men who ,vere believed to
be able, by vision or dream or mechanical instrument,
to declare the ,viII of God not yet evident-to say for
instance, like Ahab's prophets, ,vhether a certain
expedition ,vas going to be successful. "Shall I go
against Ralnoth-gilead to battle, or shall I forbear? "
" If I pursue after this troop, shall I overtake them? " 1
,vas the kind of question they ,vere expected to
answer. But this was not the special characteristic
of the prophets ,vhom ,ve call the true prophets, fe,v
anlong many, ,vhose ,vritings relnain to us. Their
special characteristic ,vas that they kne,v the
character and purpose of Jehovah and His moral
claim on their contemporaries. But for thii very
1 I Kings xxii. ð; 1 Sam. xxx. 8.

PROPHETS AS FORETELLERS 89
reason, because they sa,v so clearly into the nature
and ,vill and purpose of God, so they sa,v in large
measure ,vhat lIe ,vould do. "Surely the Lord God
will do nothing," cries Amos, " but He revealeth His
secret unto His servants the prophets." 1 Thus Amos
proclaims ,vith certainty the imminent doom of the
Northern Kingdom, and, less distinctly, the judgement
on Judah. Later l\licah is found announcing the
doom of Jerusalem, as certainly as Jeremiah a hundred
years later, or our Lord again seven hundred years
later, under circumstances of renewed apostasy.
Again, the instrument of these dooms or judge-
n1ents is sometimes, but not ahvays, clear to the
prophet's mind. Thus it is clear to Jeremiah that
Babylon is to be the instrument of divine chastisement
on Jerusalem; but it appears that Hosea had, in an
earlier age, no certainty whether the instrument of
chastisement on the Northern Kingdom was to be
Egypt or Assyria. On the other hand, in the days of
the righteous King Hezekiah, Isaiah foresees distinctly
that the apparently resistless might of the Assyrian
monarch is to be baffled and Jerusalem is to be saved;
and all the prophets, those most clearly who ,vere
occupied in proclaiming immediate doom on God's
people, proclaimed also that His purpose in calling
Israel would not ultimately fail, but that through chas-
tisement ,vould come restoration and a vast enhance-
ment of spiritual glory-the Kingdom of the l\Iessiah.
But the divine instruments of chastisement, ,vhether
Assyria or Babylon, though they are used by God
for the purposes of divine justice, are not them-
selves just. They are cruel and monstrous tyrannies.
Thus on them in turn judgement must come, as it is
certain to come on all the institutions ,vhich represent
1 Amos Hi. 7.

90 THE QUESTION OF REVELATION
human insolence and cruelty and lust. Thus a large
part of the prophetic message consists in the announce..
ment of "oracles of Jehovah" upon contemporary
kingdoms or en1pires or civilizations. It cannot be
said that these forecasts are infallible in detail.
Ezekiel pronounced distinctly a doom on Tyre at the
hand of Nebuchadnezzar King of Babylon which
,vas not by that hand or at that time fulfilled.! But on
the ,vhole these prophecies were remarkably fulfilled.
For instance, one of the miracles of history is the fact
that Israel, the divinely appointed instrument of the
true religion (as it is contended), though it 'vas again
and again apparently absorbed, or on the ,yay to be
absorbed, in the great nations ,vhich trampled it do,vn,
such as Babylon or the empire of Alexander, was in
fact preserved to fulfil its separate function. There
is force in the famous ans,ver which is said to have
been given to Frederick the Great's question, " What
is the best argument for the truth of the Christian
religion?" "The Je,vs, your l\Iajesty." But all
these announcen1ents of what ,vas to happen ,vere
forecasts-mainly of the immediate future-uttered
by the prophets for the warning or encouragement of
their contelnporaries, forecasts arising out of the
circumstances of the present and (this is the most
important point) involved in the proclamation of the
righteousness and righteous government of God. This
-and not future events, except so far as they were
bound up ,vith this-it ,vas the prophet's business to
declare. It is true that, inasmuch as the reign of the
righteous God is declared to be universal, it is neces-
sary that God should vindicate Himself finally in the
whole universe: thus ,ve have the magnificent pro-
phecies of the day of the Lord-that is, the \vorld-wide
1 Ezek. xxvi. 7-14 i cf. xxix. 18.

NO "HISTORY WRITTEN BEFOREHAND" 91
judgement upon all that resist God, and the world-wide
establishment of the kingdom or reign of God. And
the definite prophecies of particular judgements upon
particular nations are thro,vn upon the background of
this vast and vague vision of final and cosmic catas-
trophe and salvation by the prophets of the Old
Testament, as later by our Lord, when He announced
the coming doom upon Jerusalem. But such fore-
casts-though, if God be God, they must be fulfilled-
though the " end of the ,vorld " must lie in God com-
ing into His own in the whole of His own creation-
involve no detailed knowledge of the future outside
the horizon of the prophet's own time. l There is
no map of the future spread before his eyes. Pro-
phecy is not in any such sense "history written
beforehand." I
The foretelling of the future ,vas, then, a real function
of the prophets of Israel, and it was part of the
Semitic tradition that they should foretell. In the
case of the true prophets their anticipations of the
future "
ere intimately bound up ,vith their moral
message: they foretold ,vhat God must do because
He is just. On the \vhole their anticipations have
been indeed wonderfully fulfilled. But it is not in
predictions fulfilled that their chief function is to be
sought; it is in their message about God and His
nature, His character, and His purpose-and about

1 Thus
Iicah (v. 5) ant.icipates the ":Messiah in time to deliver
Judah from the Assyrian. And Haggai and Zechariah in like manner
anticipate immediately the glory for recovered Israel. And in the
book of Daniel there is a. detailed sketch of the actual history, but
only up to the time of AntiochuB Epiphanes (when the author
cel'tainly lived), and after that only the quite vaguely conceived
picture of the immediate glory of the holy nation.

Butler's most unfortunate phrase did mischief proportioned
to his extraordinary merits and greatness.

92 THE QUESTION OF REVELATION
man's capacity, responsibility, and true hope. I am
going to argue that their claim to speak the ,vord of
the Lord ,vas a true claim; and it "'as necessary,
therefore, that I should describe and n10re or less limit
their function, because the conception of it has, no
doubt, been distorted in tradition.
3. In this age \ e like to place all history in the
category of development. \Ve receive great encour-
agen1ent to do this in the Bible. But we are slowly
learning that the dogma of developn1ent must be
moulded to the facts, frankly observed and fairly
interpreted; and that historical development has been
something quite different from orderly and necessary
progress. N o,v, \vhen the author of the Epistle to the
Hebre,vs contends for a progressive revelation "in
many parts and many nlanners " through the line of
prophets culminating in Jesus Christ, he is so far at
least justified that there was an undoubted advance,
as all are agreed, in the conception of God and of
human life, say from the Judges do,,
n\vard to the New
Testament. l Certain steps in advance, from which
there ,vas no ,vithdrawal, are easily noted. It ,vas a
step forward \vhen Jahweh, the God of Israel, was
realized to be the one and only God, the Creator of all
that is, in such sense that there could be no other god.
It ,vas a step \vhen Amos proclaimed that God, because
He is God, lnust deal impartial judgement upon all

1 The Christian Fathers are full of this conception of gradualness
in God's creation and in the education of man. They solve in this
manner the moral difficulties of the Old Testament. The sign of
the success of the divine method, they argue, is that commands which
could be given to Abraham or Samuel could not be given to Chris-
tians. See passages cited in liux Mundi, pp. 240-2. An interest-
ing instance of advance is Hosea's judgement on Jehu's massacres
at Jezreel: see Hos. i. 4, compared to the judgement of the book of
Kings.

PROGRESS IN PROPHECY

98

nations, including Israel and Judah. 1 It ""as another
step when Ezekiel first clearly proclainled the great
principle that God does not merely deal ,vith nations
or nlankind in social groups, but deals in I-lis absolute
justice ,,"ith each individual. I It ,vas again a step when
the sanle Ezekiel overcame the crude antagonism
which appears in the earlier prophets bet,veen the
cultus or external and traditional ,vorship on the one
hand, and the moral spirit of prophecy on the other,
and proceeded to outline a synthesis of spirit and
cultus by remodelling the traditional ,,'orship to
be the centre of the social life of the ne,v Israel
which he foresaw. 1
On the other hand, there is retrogression. Thus
the visions of Isaiah and of others of a converted
,vorld in ,vhich Egypt and Assyria shall be included
in God's people,. gave way on the ,vhole to the visions
of apocalyptic judgement in ,vhich the adversaries of
Israel ,vere to be not converted but over,vhelmed in
final ruin. And on the ,,,hole it has to be said that
the prophets \vho stand at the head of our succession
in point of time, Amos and Hosea, l\Iicah and Isaiah,
sho,v the prophetic spirit at the full. No presentation
of the one God, creator of all that is and righteous
judge of all the ,vorld, can exceed that of Amos in
startling clearness. No picture of the passionate love
of God for IIis people can exceed in fullness and
poignancy the teaching of Hosea. And though later
prophets show much nlore clearly the influence of
their predecessors-though they "borrow" lnore
plainly-yet none of them show such dependence
as to weaken their personal consciousness of divine
commission and direct inspiration. But especially
1 Amos ii. 4, 6, iii. 2. a Ezek. xl. fI.
S Ezek. xviii. ' lea. .xix. 19 ff.

94 THE QUESTION OF REVELATION
is this true of all the prophets down to the restoration.
Though no,v and again they may quote an earlier
prophecy, yet unmistakably on the ,,-hole each one
speaks no borro,ved or inherited message, but one
which he is entirely convinced is given to him
personally by the supreme God.
Thus we have in these prophets of Israel sometlùng
which is not correctly described as a "development"
or "evolution" of spiritual truth, if, as is commonly
the case, ,,"e mean by these ,vords the natural expan-
sion or unfolding of truth, by its o,vn force, froln
tlúnker to thinker. \Vhat ,ve see is much more
accurately described, supposing that the prophets
gave a trust,vorthy account of their experiences, as a
process of divine education, which is lllore or less
progressive, but by way of successive lessons or
disclosures from above, adapted to the circumstances
and capacities of the pupil, not by ,yay of gradual
discovery from below.
4. I must insist-and ,vith some,vhat more precise
definition of the point-that Jesus Christ, ,vhom we
consider now without any reference to the question
of supernatural personality, simply as a prophet
following on John the Baptist, unmistakably took
his stand on the prophetic mcssage, both as delivered
by the prophets and as embodied in the law, as being
truly the ,,,"ord of God. Thus He corrected in its light
the tradition of scribes and Pharisees as bcing " the
commandments of men" by contrast to "the ,vord
of God "-that is to say, He appealed back behind
the ecclesiastical traditions to its fount in the divine
revelation of the Old Testalnent. 1 Not, of course, that
He was merely dependent on the Law and the prophets.
No: He claimed the right to supersede, on His own
1 Mark vii. 1-14.

CHRIST AND THE PROPHETS 95
authority, the teaching of the La,v. "It 'vas said to
thenl of old time. . . but I say unto you." 1 Again,
He recognizes elements of higher and lo,ver in the
l\Iosaic Law, appealing in the case of the Sabbath to
its moral purpose behind specific enactments, I and in
the case of marriage recognizing the moral imperfection
of the 1\losaic provisions and appealing back to a
,vord of God more original and fundamental. S l\lore-
over, in regard to the prophetic teaching about God,
He infinitely intensified the idea of God which it
conveyed on the side of His personal love to indivi-
duals, and He universalized it so that it should apply
to man as man and not only to Israel. But ,vhen we
have given full ,veight to all these considerations and
recognized to the full the personal authority of Jesus
as derived from no tradition (" No man kno,veth the
Father save the Son and he to whomsoever the Son
,villeth to reveal Him "), there can be no question
that He took His stand on the Old Testament revela-
tion as the real utterance of God, and preserved it.
In respect of God's personality and His righteousness,
His almightiness, His omnipresence, His claim on
man-in respect of the responsibility of man and
his sinfulness-in respect of the divine purpose of
redemption-in respect of the day of judgement
and the final reign of God, Jesus Christ takes
the Old Testament revelation for granted as God-
gIven.
And it must be noted that our Lord lays no stress
upon one important element in the later Jewish
tradition-,,"hich was perhaps a reflection of Greek
philosophy-the doctrine of the divine wisdom or

1 Matt. v. 21-2. 2 Mark ii. 23 fi., iii. 1-6.
8 Mark x. 1-12.

96 TIlE QUESTION OF REVELATION
word În1mancnt in nature. l This was already estab-
lished in a measure in the J e\vish tradition, and it is
,velcomed, as by I>llilo, so also by St. Paul and St.
John and the ,vhole Christian Church. But in our
Lord's teaching all the stress is on the transcendence
and absoluteness of God the Father. And God
s
relations to the \,,"orld and to men are described in
the most naïvely personal terms.
I have thought it necessary to enter into these
prelin1inary explanations in order, if possible, to
prevent a "red herring" being dra\vn across the path
of our argument at a subsequent stage (1) by the
suggestion that the very earthly origins of Hebrew
prophecy discredit it; or (2) by a mistaken estimate of
the prophets as primarily foretellers of the future; or
(3) by the inspiration of the prophets being assin1ilated
in a ,va y the facts \vill not \varrant to the natural
developn1ent of thought from thinker to thinker;
or (4) by forgetfulness that in the succession of the
Hebre\v prophets we must reckon not only John the
Baptist but also Jesus of Nazareth.
No\v, having so far cleared the ground, we find our-
selves again confronting the main question: Are these
prophetic conceptions of God and man on \vhich our
Christian life is founded-the conception of God as
intensely personal, the creator and sustainer of all
that exists, the Father and the judge of all created
spirits, eternal and unchangeable in His po,ver, His
righteousness, and His love, and the accompanying
conception of man-his spiritual capacity, his
freedom and responsibility, his appalling sinfulness,
his opportunity for recovery through the reden1ptive

1 He does, however, fully accept the later tradition concerning
spirits good and bad, and concerning personal survival of death, which
He declares to be implied in God's relation with the patrIarchs.

T.RE PROPHETS NOT PHILOSOPHERS 97
action of God, his outlook into an immortal life and
a reign of God to come,-are these allied conceptions
true? Is it true that the prophets, and Jesus Christ
the successor of the prophets, ,yere, as they claimed to
be, in such close contact with the eternal Reality that
they could, in speaking as they did of God and com-
municating His word to nlen, "speak that they did
know and testify that they had seen" or " heard " ?
For my own part, having studied the prophets and
the Gospels all my life long and asked myself this
crucial question more times than I could enumerate,
I can give but one answer. I believe their claim is
true. It is a momentous decision morally, and it is
momentous no less intellectually, because, if I nlistake
not, it dominates the intellectual situation. What
precisely it involves, intellectually considered, and
whether it brings us into any real conflict with the
fairly certain conclusions of the philosophical reason
or of science, we shall be considering shortly with all
seriousness. But first of all we have to ask ourselves
what other estimates of the prophetic message can be
suggested and whether they ought to satisfy us. 1
I. It cannot be even plausibly suggested that we
are dealing in the prophets' utterances with intellec-
tual conclusions reached, like the conclusions of the
Greek philosophers, by process of reasoning or obser-
vation of nature, and liable, like the conclusions of
philosophers, to revision by themselves and their
successors in the light of subsequent reflection. The
Hebrews showed almost no tendency to"
ards philo-
sophical speculation, and the prophets are not like
philosophers. They assume the reality of God, the

1 In what follows I am following Hamilton's People oJ God (Oxford
Press), or rather I am conscious of the impression the argument
of his first volume made upon me when he first issued the book.
8

OS THE QUESTION OF REVELATION
God of Israel, and that He can communicate with
them if He will, and they are convinced that He has
done so-in such a nlannel' as leaves quite unsolved
a nunlber of questions \vhich profoundly interest
philosophers, but apparently have no interest for
the prophets; but also in such a lllanner as supplies
them with all the knowledge of God required for
practical life, and in such a manner as admits of being
rendered into clear propositions about God and His
will such as men can understand and must accept or
reject. No doubt God may reveal more to those ,vho
come after. But they kno\v that what has been
given to them so far must be true as God is true.
2. It is also plain that their dominant conviction
that God governs the world in justice cannot be what
we should call a deduction from experience-the
experience of Israel as a nation or of the individual.
It is quite true that the Bible is full of assurances,
given on divine authority to Israel, that if they
,viII be obedient to God they will be prosperous,
and that, on the other hand, disaster will follow
disobedience. And \ve commonly forget how true
it is that any nation \vhich as a whole should set
itself to obey a lofty moral and social law like
that of the Hebre\vs would indeed be prosperous.
But it is the constant testimony of the prophets
that Israel has been since the days of the Exodus
almost uniformly rebellious, and that the crowning
mercies of Jehovah have been bestowed on them
not in accordance with their d
serts but in spite
of them. According to the prophets, at no period
has God had a chance of showing what He would
do for an obedient people.. There are indeed in the

1 This is the tone of the prophetic history as a whole: ct. HOl. i.,
iii., lea v., Eaek. xvi., xx. 6 fI., xxxvi. 17 f., cf. Ps. lxxyiil. 17 tL

NOR TAUGHT BY EXPERIENCE &9
prophets a few appeals to happier experiences like that
of J ererniah to " Shallum the son of Josiah King of
Judah "-" Did not thy father eat and drink, and
do judgement and justice? then it wai well with
him. He judged the cause of the poor and needy.
then it was ,veIl." I But on the other hand the earlier
prophets who were contemporary with Jeroboam II
\vitnessed the highest point of Israel's prosperity
coinciding with the gross moral degradation which
they denounce; and Jeremiah, just before the Cap-
tivity, heard the lamentations of those who attributed
their disaster to their desertion of the Queen of
Heaven, and looked back on their past prosperity &i
due to her favour when they were faithful to her..
And the prophets show no signs of being taken in by
evidences of prosperity accompanying moral faithless-
ness to Jehovah. The fact is that their conviction that
national prosperity would always follow obedience to
God, and disaster always follo\v rebellion, is not a
conclusion based upon experience, but a conviction
that so it must be, if God is God, or a conviction that
God has so promised to order national life. And as
regards individuals, it was the frequent experience of .
the righteous man in undeserved affliction, which in
part forced the Hebrews forward to the vision of .
future life in which God's justice should have room to
vindicate itself. Certainly their doctrine of God's
justice, though in part it can appeal to experiences,
does not vary with their experiences and is not based
upon them. It is a conviction established in their
souls by what they believed to be the voice of God
bearing witness concerning Himself.
8. It used to be more the fashion than it is to-day

1 Jer. xxii. 10.

. I Jer. xliv. 17-18-a 'rivid passage.

100 THE QUESTION OF REVELATION
to talk about "the Semitic genius for monotheism,"
and to treat the Hebre,v monotheism as if it were the
natural developlnent of the religious tendencies of a
certain large group of the human family to which
the Israelites belonged. But we know, or can
conjecture with a certain measure of certainty, what
the religion of Canaan and l\Ioab and Ammon and
Edom was. \Ve knòw how much there was in the
instincts and the tradition of Israel inclining them
to assimilate and to retain this type of religion, and
that the religion of the prophets-their ethical rnono-
theism-only established itself by violent conflict
with this "Semitic genius." On a wide view of
Semitic religions, a great scholar 1 has described their
characteristic on the 'v hole as not "monotheism,"
but "sexual dualism." Certainl y there is nothing
in the religion of the races ,vhich touched Israel
between the Exodus and the Captivity which could
in any way account for the prophetic tcaching. Again,
it is as far as possible from being a reflection, through

Ioses, of the Egyptian religion. It is Inarkedly
contrary to it in all its chief features-its polytheisln,
its idolatry, its preoccupation with the dead and the
world of the dead. Attention has recently been
directed to the heretical Egyptian King Akhnaton, and
the noble expression which, in his psalm to the Sun's
Disk, the only god 'v horn he ,vorshipped, he gives to
the idea of the One Lord and Giver of Life. This is
indeed a noble utterance, worthy to be set beside
the I04th Psalm in the Bible; and it may rightly
be used as evidence that divine inspiration was not
limited to Israel. But the religion of Akhnaton was
killed almost at its birth, and was buried, and so
1 Nöldeke; see Wellhausen's Prolegomena to the HiBt. oj IBrad
(English tra.ns., Black, 1885), p. 440.

NOR BY FOREIGN TEACHERS 101
remained till quite recently it was disinterred. It
did not affect the Egyptian tradition at all, and no
one has supposed that it affected Israel. Once more,
there were noble Babylonian hymns in which a
certain unique majesty and high moral attributes
are ascribed to one God, considered for the time
apart from all others.! But these, again, were probably
individual utterances ,vhich did not affect the popular
polytheism and idolatry, and also no one would
suggest that Hebre,v prophets before the Exile had
any knowledge of them. s What elements in their
tradition the J e,vs shared with their neighbours,
like the stories of creation and the flood, which were
at their root common to them with the Babylonians,
were wholly transmuted, in their religious or theo-
logical meaning, in the process of being adopted.
Of course, in this paragraph I cannot attempt to
argue the matter at any length, nor have I the
requisite knowledge or authority. But I seem to see
a gro,ving disinclination in scholars to question the
complete originality of the distinctive prophetic
religion, and there is no source which can be plausibly
suggested before the Exile from which it could have
been either consciously borrowed or unconsciously
derived.
It must, then, be admitted, I think, that the
ethical monotheism of the prophets neither was
derived from any foreign source nor was anything

1 This is called" henotheism," as distinct from U monothE'ism,"
i.e. exclusive concentration on one God, without denial of the
existence of others.
2 For the Babylonian hymns see Hastings's Dict. 01 the Bible,
vol. v, pp. 563 tI. For Akhnaton see \Veigall's Akhnaton, Pharaoh
01 Egypt (Blackwood); see also on both subjects, Sanday, Divine
Overruling (Clark), pp. 36 fi.

10
THE QUESTION OF REVELATION
which the natural genius of the Semitic peoples would
be likely to generate.
4. But there is one other" explanation" of the
voice of God to the prophets, ,vhich is more likely to
eommend itself to our generation-it is the psycho-
logical. "Does the experience of controlling force
which the prophet feels really come from SOlne
external influence, or is it merely his consciousness of
ordinarily unkno,vn depths in his own nature? It
is obvious that a theory of prophecy could be made
on lines rendered familiar by psychologists, by
øuggesting that what happens in a prophetic experi-
ence is the sudden' coming up , of "yhat is ordinarily
8ubliminal." 1 Something of this sort is constantly
being suggested to us in the name of psychology-
that what prophets and seers and religious people have
taken for divine voices or influences are really only
the occasional "u prushes," whether in a state of
trance or without any such suppression of normal
eonsciousness, of what is ordinarily kept outside
consciousness, buried in the region of the unconscious
mind-a vaster region than that of our consciousness
-assuming the form of an independent consciousness
or a different person from ourselves communicating
with us.
Now, there can be no doubt that this unconscious
or subconscious or subliminal region of mind is a
very important fact, which psychology to-day is
fulfilling an exceedingly important function in
investigating. l\'Iy mind is, it appears, much wider
than my present consciousness. Thus it is quite
certain that we retain the record of much more of
our experiences than we consciously remember at any
1 Xireopp Lak., LaMffUJ,,.kø oj th

(J,,.11l:Churc" (?tIn.cmil1aft, 1920),
)Þ.

NOR FRO
I SUBLI:\IINAL SOURCES 108
moment, whether ,ve iIlterpret this fact in physio-
logical terms (as in Dr. Carpenter's theory of "un-
conscious cerebration") or more purely pyschologic-
ally. Perhaps everything that has happened to us,
or been willed or imagined or done by us, is some-
where unconsciously remembered and may be one
day consciously disclosed. Uprushes from the
unconscious memory occur to all of us. 1 And besides
being a storing-place for our personal experiences, it
appears to be certain that the unconscious mind is
also what Bergson terms a "racial memory"-that
therein are stored hereditary instincts, tendencies,
and capacities, such as are not merely individual,
and yet constitute the background, the deeply
influential background, of our individual and conscious
life. So it must be that there subsist in us, with
varying degrees of force, ancient savage and animal
tendencies and instincts, such as conscious reason has
tended to submerge and exclude (more and more
completely the more rational and self-conscious our
life becomes), but which are never quite extinguished.
Here may lie normally disused faculties of telepathy
and intuition into natural forces, which some animals

1 I suppose tha.t the two forms in which the existence of the un-
e')nscious mind is most vividly brought to our notice are: (I) the
uprushes of memory from a region outside one's present conscious-
ness, which in part we can and in part we ca.nnot control. Thus, if
I struggle to remember a name and fail to do so, I am powerless.
But when I have ceased to struggle, it often presents itself un-
expectedly after a time, as from a hidden field of memory. (2) When
I have struggled with Borne intellectual problem and brought my
mind to a state where the solution seems to be appearing and yet
disappears in confusion. if I can get a night's rest, the chances are
that the tangle disappears in a measure, and order appears with the
morning. In such ways we become conscious that our mind is
larger than our field of consciousness. But there is no tendency
in theøe normal experiences for the øubliminal mind to appear M .
ee-eonøcÍousne!!ø or another pereon.

104 THE QUESTION OF REVELATION
and savages appear to possess, and which certain
individuals among us appear to recover or exercise
in normal or abnormal states. It is also the case that
in certain abnormal individuals the uprushes from the
unconscious take the form of a " co-consciousness, n
that is, the appearance of being another person
different from ourselves, though "the co-conscious,
so far as the evidence goes, is either non -existent or
practically negligible in normal persons; while in
pathological subjects, though sometimes, indeed,
the source of valuable ideas and useful actions,
it is always limited and inferior to the waking
self, and likely to be very far from beautiful or
su blhne." 1
Now, granted all this, it is obvious how much in
spiritisn1, and in the lower forms of prophecy and
divination, such as those familiar in and around
early Israel, may be explained in terms of the sub-
conscious. 1 It is obvious also how vast an influence
the subconscious exercises upon all our religious
tendencies.' But so far the subconscious or uncon-
scious region appears as containing only what our
personal experiences or the age-long experiences of
our race or its animal progenitors have stored within
it. But when I set myself to consider the message

1 Pratt's The Religious OOn8CioU8ness (:Macmillan Co., New York,
1920), pp. tS9-60.

I think, for instance, that the" word of the Lord" commanding
Israel to destroy Amalek, and Jehu to destroy the whole house of
Ahab, would, if the supposed divine communications had reached
no higher level, have been of a piece with the" word of Chemosh"
to !\Iesha King of
Ioab, and would have admitt.ed of a very natural
"explanation." It is on]y because of what Israel's reJigion was to
become under the lea.dership of the great prophets that we are
naturally disposed to see a higher meaning and purpose even in its
lower stages.
I Pratt, Ope cit., pp. 61-3.

THE VOICE OF GOD 105
of the Biblical prophets, which they believe to have
been directly inspired into them by God, it seems to
me absurd to seek to interpret this as the echo of
tradition or instinct stored in the unconscious. We
need not discuss whether the ne,v voice ,vas first
heard by l\Ioses or by Amos, at any rate the racial
tradition knew it not, and it never succeeded in
becoming the tradition till after the Captivity, when
the succession of the prophets ceased. And the
message of each prophet in the succession of prophets,
such as ...t\..n10s, Hosea, Isaiah, l\iicah, Jeremiah, or
Ezekiel, gains its power not only from its intense
individuality, but also from the obvious elements of
novelty in each. In each case the voice was intensely
individual, and the message in some respects markedly
new-something which the human race had not heard
before. 1t:Ioreover, the communication between the
prophet's consciousness and the mysterious Power
which addresses itself to him is carried on in the highest
region of clear consciousness and will. Thus, as the
communication claÎ1ns to be, so also on close enquiry
it appears to be, from above-from what is higher
than the personal consciousness of the prophets, not
from what is lower. A great deal too much is made
of the fact that Ezekiel l and St. Paul-the one more
often than the other-fell into trances, during which,
in some manner, their spirits were a\vake while their
bodies ,vere not. This did not apparently occur in
the case of most of the prophets; and the message
which Ezekiel and St. Paul delivered ,vas a message
addressed to their will and conscious intelligence, and
by their will and conscious intelligence received and
1 In Ezekiel we appear to have extraordinarily interesting
instances of telepathy-perception in the remote region by the
river Chebar of scenes occurring in J erusðlem.

106 THE QUESTION OF REVELATION
delivered. I see, therefore, no evidence at all making
it plausible to suggest that 'v hat presented itself to
them was really-though they mistook its nature-
thcir unconscious mind. Whence did the unconscious
mind get this astonishing series of messages? It
does not lie within the compass of the materials out
of which, as far as we can judge, it is and must be
formed. 1 In other ,vords, it seems infinitely more
probable that it was "a do,vnrush from the super-
conscious "-the voice of the Spirit of God, as the
prophets themselves so imperiously insist.

.

E"ery man must draw his own conclusion R! to the
nature or source of the prophets' inspiration. It can
be done only by a reverent and continuous reading of
at least some large portions of their ,vritings, passing
lightly over the obscure passages and paying the
deepest attention to what ,ve can easily understand,
which is incomparably the most important and largest
part of their message. \Ve have to take note both
of the individuality and distinctiveness of the message
of each of the prophets and of the continuity of the
teaching through their whole succession. We have to
pay regard to the resumption of the prophetic message
by John the Baptist and its consummation in Jesus

1 See Pratt, p. 64. What is highest" in the religious genius is
to be sought in his conscious states rather than in some form of
insensihility. . . . It is difficult to see why God should choose to
communicate with 8 split-off complex. . . rather than with the
man himself." . . . "Hence the emphasis I have put on the
absurdity of looking to the subconscious 8S nobler and purer than
the conscious self." Of course we must recognize that the forms or
.ceneryof the prophet's vision come from their traditions and their
experiences. What I am
peaking of is not the form of the visions,
hut their mOlal and epiritual content.

POWER THE TEST OF TRUTH 10'1
Christ. Then we have to ask ourselves the great
question: Can we ascribe the message to any lower

ource than that to which the prophets themselves
ascribe it? I do not think we can.
As to the psychological method of the divine
communication, we may be as ignorant as we generally
are of the psychological conditions under which artists
and poets and mystics attain their intuitions. But of
the source of the comn1unications, as coming really
and directly from God, I dare to feel certain. And
I am bound to go on to consider the intellectual
consequences of this mon1entous conclusion. For the
communications to the prophets had the sort of vivid
reality ,vhich required them to state what they
" heard" in the form of propositions or messages
appealing to the intellect as ,veIl as to the will. That
is to say, they carry inevitably intellectual con-
cl us ions .
And I am sure that in the consideration of the truth
of the prophetic testimony we mu
t not leave out of
account the effect of their teaching on those who
accepted it,and that on the ,videst and most permanent
field. It is impossible not to feel that men who
exhibit a quite new po,ver in life are thereby proved
to have got into closer touch with reality. And if
this new power appears as a direct consequence of
a theological belief, the new power so far accredits
the belief. Buddhism and
Iohammedanism and
Stoicism liberated new human power to deal with
life, and doubtless in proportion to the truth ,vhich
was in them. But I believe that the spirit of Jewish
prophecy and that to,vards which it lcd-the spirit
of Christianity in its n10st genuine form all down the
ages, the spirit of sonship in Christ-exhibits human
nature &t its best and richest. Something has

108 THE QUESTION OF REVELATION
occurred for which only the experience of the prophets
and the witness of Christ can account, and ,vithout
which the moral treasures of human nature would be
vastly impoverished. This was especially evident in
the first days "\vhen Christianity stood in marked
contrast to the world ,vhich surrounded it; but the
impression is not much less vivid wherever we see
genuine Christianity in a group or a family or an
individual. The Christian impresses us as pre-
eminently capable in virtue of his faith of dealing
with the circumstances and sufferings and tasks of
life in a spirit of liberty-with the courage, hope, and
joy of a son in his father's household-un perplexed
and undismayed. And he draws this power from
what is distinctive about his faith in God. Thus it
was that when the Christian Church came out into
the Graeco- Roman world, it proved itself so combative,
not merely for some belief in God, but for its own
distinctive belief. It ,yould not be content with
the philosophic belief in God as the soul or reason in
all things. It demanded the belief, \vhich the prophets
and Christ had taught it, in God the absolute Creator,
,vho is also the absolute Love-in the God and
Father of the Lord Jesus Christ-in the God of whom
Jesus Christ is the living image in human form.
Christian humility, Christian enterprise, Christian
love, the Christian sense of supremacy over all evil
influences and powers, the Christian hope, the assur-
ance of the I{ingdom, all depended upon-not any
form of theism, but the specific Hebrew belief. And
it is still so dependent. The God which current
philosophy to-day on the whole offers us ,vould never
of itself supply the motive and the vision which the
distinctive Christian character peremptorily needs;
and this is specially obvious if we consider the moral

THE RELIGION OF CO:\I:\ION l\IEN 109
needs and capacities of ordinary men and women.
It is chiefly among them that the Christian faith-
\v hich is the He bre,v faith .perfected -w here it is
genuine, vindicates the truth of its premises by the
fruits ,vhich it shows in life.

CHAPTER V

THE CONTENTS OF THE PROPHETIC FAITH
WE find ourselves no\v in this position-that ,ve have
deliberately, even if still provisionally,! accepted the
reality of God's disclosure of Himself through the
Hebrew prophets and Jesus Christ. Thus ,ve assent
(so far) to the statement ,vith which the Epistle to
the Hebrews begins, that" God in many parts and
many manners spake in old times unto the fathers by
the prophets and in these last times by His Son,"
though no question concerning the person of Jesui
Christ-as to ,vhether He differs from the propheti
in being the Divine Son-has yet been raised.
This self-disclosure of God was given, through the
prophets and Jesus Christ, for a practical purpose-as
a "word of life," that men might know how to live
if they would be in fello,vship with God. Thus there
are many questions which have always troubled
speculative philosophers of vthich the prophets appear
to be quite unconscious. But life and thought cannot
be separated in a rational being, such as Inan is. If
he must live in a certain way in order to please God
or be at peace with Him, that must be, he feels,
because God Himself has a certain character or nature.

1 Because we have still to consider whether any irreconcilable
oonßict, such as would throw into confusion our whole conception
of truth, is going to appear between the substance of the professed
leU-wlilclosure of God and the rest of our rational knowledge.
110

PRACTICAL TRUTHS 111
And, in fact, the divine self-disclosure assumes
constantly this form-" Be thou holy, for I am holy."
There may be many things concerning God which are
not disclosed because they have no practical bearing
on life, or because they pass human comprehension.
This is what St. Paul suggests when he says, "\Ve
know in part." Again, the expression given of the
being and nature of God may be naïvely given and
not in the way of precise intellectual definition, or it
may be presented in figure and metaphor, because it
can be so more effectively presented as guidance to
the plain man. And this involves perplexities from
the point of view of the speculative understanding.
This is what St. Paul means when he says" we see
through a glass darkly," that is "like a reflection in
a mirror, in dark sayings." Nevertheless, in St.
Paul's view, all is not dark. Far from it. Our life
is to be lived in the light. It is to be based on the
luminous convictions that God is one; that every-
thing that exists He made and controls; that He is
awfully and inexorably righteous, but nevertheless
ungrudging, self-sacrificing, love; that He takes
constant care of each man and loves each with an
individual love; that His purpose at the last resort
for each and all is redemption and salvation; that
there is a Kingdom of God already in being and still
to come in full perfection. These are practical truths,
but they are only practical-that is, practically
effective-so long as they are believed to be true;
and they can only be believed to be true if they can
be taken as propositions for the intellect, propositions
dealing with reality, like the propositions we frame
about nature, of course with due regard to their
limits in each particular case.
In recoinizing this we are deliberately traversing

112 CONTENTS OF THE PROPHETIC FAITH
certain tendencies in contemporary philosophy. There
are schools of philosophy 1 ,vhich bid religion take all
it needs in the ,vay of truths about God for granted.
They are" facts for faith." They are the presuppo..
sitions of religious experience. They can be assumed
as true. But they must not be translated into
philosophical or historical or scientific propositions.
There is to be no èonnexion bet,veen the truths of
religious faith on the one hand and historical science
or physical science or metaphysical philosophy on the
other. But this is impossible. Religious experience,
like every kind of experience, if it is not a delusion, is
experience of reality, it is reality as felt.! If what
religion feels it does not at the san1e time know to
belong to the ,vorld of reality, ,vith ,vhich the man of
science and the historian and the philosopher are also
dealing, it must cease to feel it. It is only the con..
sciousness of objective reality ,vhich can keep the
feeling in being. And our religious nature cannot
be secluded in a water-tight compartment from our
scientific or rational nature. Thus our present task
is t,vofold. We must first (1) discover what are the

1 I am referring of course to the Ritschlian school of theologians
and the philosophical pragmatists: no doubt they have done good
ßervice in vindicating the right of religion and morality to make the
postulates necessary for their maintenance and development. Cf.
Dr. Bra.dley: "The ideas which best express our highest religious
needs a.nd their satisfaction, must certainly be true" (Essays on
Truth and Reality, p. 431). But it is idle to tell us to make the
necessary postulates if we are told that these necessary assumptions
are destitute of reality from the point of view of science or history
or meta.physics. It cannot, we feel, be done. I should like to refer
my readers to Faith and Facts, a Study oj Ritschlianiam, by Ernest
EdghiH (:MacmiIlan, 1910), 8 young scholar whose loss we have every
reason to deplore.
I As to the question of grades of reality something is said below
(pp. 176, 292). I a.m here thinking, not of Dr. Bradley or Lord
Haldane, but of the pragmatists.

THE PERSONALITY OF GOD 113
intellectual propositions about God and man which
the prophetic revelation plainly and unmistakably
postulates as real and valid. And secondly (2) ,ve
must con5ider ,vhether these propositions are in
hannony with the conclusions of philosophy and
science, that is to say, ,vhether there is a synthesis
either attained_or attainable between faith and
kno\vledge. The former of these enquiries will occupy
this chapter.
1. The Personality of God.-\Vhat ,ve mean by this
term lies at the very heart of all that the prophets
taught. Their God is not an abstract quality to
contemplate, such as beauty, justice, truth; but a
being of deliberate ,vill and energetic action, approv-
ing and disapproving, loving and hating, judging and
blessing; ,vho not only can respond to man's advances
and prayers, but ,vho from the beginning has been,
and ahvays is, taking the initiative in ,villing and
acting; ,vhose ,viII is to be discerned behind every-
thing that happens and ,vorking through everything
that happens, yet who also appears as acting more
intensely here than there, in the execution of particular,
individual purposes. There can be no question about
the truth of this conception of God if, in any real
sense, the experience of the prophets is an experience
of reality. For it is its very heart and substance.
Of course ,ve may say-nay, we must say-that
the human personality is an inadequate image of the
divine personality. 'Ve nlay prefer to call Him supra-
personal. We nlay lay stress upon the necessary
element of metaphor in all human language about
Him. But we are bound to recognize the funda-
mental intellectual implication of the whole experience
of the prophets-that God is, in some supreme and
transcendent sense, all that we mean when we speak
9

114 CONTENTS OF THE PROPHETIC FAITH
of a person. The Old Testalnent, as is well known,
used "anthropomorphic" terms about God freely-
that is, it runs the risk of lo,vering the conception of
God sooner than suffer Him to be thought of as an
abstraction or an idea.
There 'vas a tendency, no doubt, in later Judaism,
from an excessive sense of the transcendence of God,
to shrink from the use of the personal name Jahweh,
and to speak rather of "the heavens" or "the
Blessed One"; but it is noticeable that our Lord,
by His habitual use of the term "Father" for God,
and the associations He attached to it, brought back
the emphasis upon His personality. The Father is
one who ,vilIs and does, not merely all things in
general, but particular things, who goes out to seck
and save individual souls-in short, who is a person.
Mr. Clement Webb has recently said that" it ,vas
in connexion ,vith the doctrine of the Trinity that
the ,vords 'person' and 'personality' came to be
used of the Divine Being," and that though person-
ality in God is the orthodox Christian doctrine, to
speak of the personality oj God has a suggestion of
the unitarian heresy. 1 No\v, it is true that the terms
for personality, whether in Greek or Latin, ,vere only
elaborated in this connexion. But Christianity felt
the importance of personality, both in man and in
God, before it found a term to express the idea.
And the personality of the one God was surely a
central idea of the prophetic religion which Chris-
tianity inherited long before any question was raised
about personal distinction in the Godhead..
2. God (Jehovah) as the Absolute Being.-Whatever

1 God and Personality (Allen & Unwin, 1918), p. 61, etc.
2 Indeed,
lr. Webb admits this (p. 8ð): "Few would hesitate to
describe Judaism as a religion with & personal God."

THE ABSOLUTE BEING 115
exists, according to the message of the prophets, is
from God as its author, and in Him as its sustainer,
and in some sense expresses Him. Everything
depends on God so that ultimately there is no
power but God's po\ver. There is no rival po,ver,
external to Him. In some sense He is the doer of
all that is done. "I am Jehovah and there is none
else; beside me there is no god; I ,vill gird thee
[King Cyrus], though thou hast not kno,vn me; that
they may know from the rising of the sun, and from
the ,vest, that there is none beside me; I am the
Lord, and there is none else. I form the light and
create darkness; I make peace and create evil 1 ; I
am the Lord that doeth all these things." I "The
whole earth is full of his glory." "\Vhither shall I
go then from thy spirit ? Or whither shall I flee
from thy presence? "1 This absoluteness of God is
the jubilant proclamation of all the prophets; and
the New Testament reiterates it. "Without him (the
Word who is God) ,vas not anything made." "All
things have been created through hin1 and unto him,
and in him all things consist.'" "In him we Ii ve
and move and have our being." · It is only to say
this in other words to say that the constant assump-
tion of the prophets of the Old and New Testaments
is the divine omnipotence--that is, the sunlmary
power of God over and in all things that exist.
But to tills teaching of the divine absoluteness
there are t,vo qualifications. (a) The first, ,vhich
will be dealt \vith later from another point of vie,v,
but must be referred to here, is that, in ,yilling to
create hosts of free beings, God has willed to submit

1 I.e. cause calamity; Bee be1ow. I Isn.. vi. 3; PB. cxxxÏx. 7.
J 18&. xlv. ð-7. ' John Ì. 3; Co1. i. 16-17.
· Acts xvii. 28.

LI R
ST. .AARY'S COLLEGE

116 CONTENTS OF THE PROPHETIC FAITI)
Himsclf to a most important lin1Ïtation of His omnipo-
tence. The free beings n1ay rebel, and in fact have
rebelled, against God, and ignored God, and their
,,'ilfulncss and insolence and consequent ignorance of
God have on the vastest scale disordered God's world,
in ,vhich they ,vere appointed His vicegerents. And
God has not overruled their liberty because it was
misused, but subl its Himself to their n1i5use of
their po,,'crs, which are at bottom His, so that
in Isaiah's tremendous phrase already referred to,
He is made to serve by their sins. I Thus He
appears in the ,vorld's history as one ,veak and
defeated: "He delivers his strength into captivity,
and his glory into the enemies' hand." I He appears
as contending for His o,vn cause under every kind
of disad vantage, and suffering in the sufferings
of His faithful people-a "limited" God indeed,
though self-limited by His o,vn choice in creating
frce beings, not lin1ited by an y external po,ver;
a suffering God even in the Old Testament. "In
all the afflictions of his people, he ,vas affiicted." I
Also He is represented as a God who, because He has
made mcn His vicegerents, must appeal to His
people for their hclp: "\-Vhom shall I send, and ,vho
'\vill go for us ? ". No doubt the conception through-
out the Bible is that there can be no final failure of
God or of I-lis cause. Because God is God, He must
" come into His own" in the ,vhole of His universe;
and each insolent po,ver in turn must be over-
,vhelmed. These epiphanies of divine po,ver are the
" days of the Lord," and there is to be a final " day."

1 Is8.. xliii. 24.
2 Ps. lxxviü. 61. The word! in the Prayer Book vereion. U their
power. . . their beauty," are 8. mere mistake.
s Isa. lxiii. 9. · lea. vi. 8.

THE SELF-LIl\IITED GOD 117
The Bible never allows us to forget that. N everthe-
less God's long-continued meekness, or self-submission
to be defeated and to suffer at the hands of His
o,vn creatures, constitutes an even startling limita-
tion upon the conception of His absoluteness. And
it ought to be remarked that increasingl y after
the Captivity and in the Ne,v Testament the universe
is conceived of as the d,velling-place of hosts of free
spirits other than men, some of ,vhom have misused
their freedom at least as fully and disastrously as
men; so that the struggle for right must be regarded
as universal-far beyond the limits of human activity.
"'Ve ,vrestle [and God wrestles in us] against the
principalities, against the po,vers, against the world-
rulers of this darkness, against the spiritual hosts of
,

ickedness in the hea venl y places." 1
(b) And there is another limitation of the divine
absoluteness as represented in the Old Testament
to which "\ve need to give careful attention. Abso-
luteness, involving omnipotence, may be represented
as arbitrariness. If God is personally the doer
of everything at every moment, there might be
imagined to be no limit to ,vhat might happen-
nothing that ,ve could calculate upon. But that
God's will is the la,v of nature, and God's "\vill is
constant and covenanted, ,vas affirmed in the prophetic
reHgion throughout. "He has made a decree [for

1 Eph. vi. 12. The conception of Satan and his angels a.s rebels.
like men but before men, misusing their legitimate powers. becomes
dominant in later Judaism. It is t.he assumption of the New Test.a-
ment, it being inconceivable that God could have created spirits
to be evil. If the devils are what they are, that must be because
they. like man. are sinners (1 John iii. 8. John viii. 44). In the
Biblical view there can be no essentially evil nature. The morally
evil things can be only good things misuf:ed; a.nd the morally evil
spirits only good spirits become rebellious.

118 CONTENTS OF THE PROPHETIC FAITH
nature] which shall not pass away." 1 This sense of
the inherent order of nature-" laws of nature"
in the modern sense-grew in the later period of
Israel's history, perhaps under Greek influence.
Thus in the '\rVisdom literature,. the order of nature
is represented as the influence of the Divine Wisdom
(personified) "reaching fronl one end of all things
unto the other, mightily and sweetly ordering all
things." The idea suggested is that the principle
of order lies in the Divine Being Himself, and inas-
much as "the being of God is a kind of la,v to His
,vorking,'" so God can do nothing arbitrarily or
foolishly, any more than He could "deny Himself"
by doing wrongly. Thus the sense of the divine
absoluteness and omnipotence is conditioned by the
sense that God is self-limited by IIis own being, and
that we can know for certain that neither unrighteous-
ness nor disorder is possible to Him. &
Thus man, as made in God's image, both rational
and moral, has ,vithin himself a certain standard by
which to judge of God. In magnificent passages of
the prophets God is represented as appealing to man
to recognize and vindicate the justice of His actions.'
The Bible, we may say, justifies John Stuart l\Iill
in his famous refusal to call God righteous if His
action did not respond to the ultimate demand of the
human conscience. It is true that at moments the
a,vful sense of the divine greatness and the pettiness
and short-sightedness of man over,vhelms the feelings

1 Ps. cxlviii. 6; cf. Gen. viii. 22, Ï'x. 16.
2 See, e.g., Prove viii. 22-30, 'Visdom vii. 17-viii. 1.
I Hooker, E. P., bk. i, ii, 2.
. In Isa. xxviii. 23-4 there is a. very subtle appreciation of the
divine wisdom, both in its unity of purpose 8nd variety of appli-
cation, 8S illustrated in the parable of the husba.ndma.n.
I Isa. v. 3-4, Micah vi. 2 fi., Ezek. xviii. 2ð; cf. Pa. Ii. 4.

GOD NOT ARBITRARY

119

of the Biblical writers, so as to make all human
criticism seem foolish and blasphemous. Thus the
great answer of God out of the ,vhirlwind to Job
seems to be a mere appeal to His transcendent power.
But this is not the only or the chief impression the
book of Job leaves on us. The chief impression is
of the unconquerable strength of the appeal for
justice on the part of the innocent and helpless
sufferer; and even after the overwhelming appeal to
the divine omnipotence, the great dramatist cannot
draw to his conclusion without making God satisfy
the requirement of human justice, in the most naïve
fashion, by restoring to Job more than his former
prosperity.
Or, again, we find St. Paul in the New Testament
sharply rebuking the Jew ,vho dared to criticize the
justice of God, if He really had, as St. Paul said He
had, disinherited in its main bulk His own chosen
race-" Who art thou that repliest against God ? . . .
Hath not the potter a right over the clay?" But
,ve must pay attention to the main point of St. Paul's
argument. \Vhat St. Paul is refuting is a claim on
the part of the Jew really destructive of all morality,
viz. that God had so tied Himself to one race as to
be bound to sho,v it preference, ho,vever it might
behave. St. Paul, then, is asserting God's absolute
liberty, not to override moral distinctions, but to
ignore a merely racial claim; and the end of his
argument is a vindication of .the justice and gracious-
ness of God's world-wide purp'Jse. 1
On the whole we must recognize that the omnipo-
tence of God is in the prophetic teaching the opposite of
arbitrary. It must correspond with certain principles
1 See Rom. ix.-xi. I ha.ve worked this point out in an Exposi-
tion of the Romans (:\Iurray), vol. H. pp. 1-14.

120 CONTENTS OF \HE PROPHETIC FAITH
of order and justice which have their seat in the
being of God IIimself.
8. The
loral Perfection of God.-In the pagan
religions it was common to represent a God as
formidable in an arbitrary or irrational sense: so
that he should be carefully provided with all that he
is accustomed to require, without asking why, and be
hedged about lvith tabus lest he should "break out"
upon his vtorshipping people, like a physical plague.
It cannot be denied that this sort of conception appears
in the earlier stages of Israel's religion. l But in the
prophetic religion the sense of the divine holiness is
purged from such un,vorthy physical associations and
has become absolutely spiritual. The fear of the
Lord is no irrational fear of something unaccount-
able, but a rational a,ve in the presence of one whose
character is kno,vn. God is absolutely righteous-
of purer eyes than to behold iniquity: inexorably and
impartially just. If clouds and darkness are still
round about Hin1, yet there is no doubt about the
quality of His ,viII, "righteousness and judgement
are the habitation of his seat." And there is ,vith
Hinl no respect of persons, no favouritism of His o,,,,n
people such as could lead Him to ignore their sins ;
and no possibility of error in His judgements, for
He sees nlen's hearts and knows their nlost secret
thoughts. But though He is thus a,yful in His holi-
ness, there is an equal emphasis upon His love. This
appears in the intensest form in the manner in \\
hich
Hosea is bidden to symbolize the love of God for His
o,vn people, II and there is no need to d ,veIl long on
,vhat everyone would admit, that at the climax of the
self-disclosure of God, Jesus Christ represents Him-

1 See E:xod. xix. 22, 24; 2 Sam. vi. 8.
2 In his relations to his adulterous wife; see Hos. i., ii.

THE GOOD GOD 1
1
not less than before as unalterably righteous and
tremendous in His holiness, for the Gospels are very
severe books, but as unquestionably love-self-
sacrificing love-love that goes out to every individual
to seek him and to save him. 1 The limitations and
the imperfections of the Old Testament conception of
divine love, which are conspicuous in its earlier stages,
are here quite obliterated. The love of God is active
and universal. Its "jealousy" remains, because
God cannot endure to see men wasting themselves
on things that cannot profit, but it has in it no element
of grudging, and covers with its sanction and blessing
all uses of life which are within the wide purpose of
God. The final sumn1ary expression of the character
of God is St. John's phrase, " God is love." Where
God is, love is: and where love is, God is: and the
end of all things is to be the victory of love.
There are profound difficulties in the ,vay of re-
ceiving this comforting doctrine of the goodness of
God \vhich SOllie of us in our day feel acutely. Some
of these modern difficulties-such as that ,vhich arises
from the vast amount of animal pain in the ,vorld-
the believers of the Old and New Testaments hardly
seem to have felt at all. With others-such as the
sufferings of innocent men-they obviously ,vrestled.
\Vhen 've are considering 2 ,v hether the doctrine of
divine love can be accepted ,vithout violence to

1 Not long before our Lord's time the love of God for every indi-
vidual was beautifully expressed in the Book of '\Visdom xi. 23:
" For thou hast mercy on all men, because thou hast power to do all
things, and thou overlookest the sins of men to the end they may
repent. For thou lovest all things that are, and abhorrest none of the
things th&t thou didst make; for never wouldest thou have formed
anything if thou didst hate it. . . . But thou sparest all things
because they are thine, 0 sovereign Lord, thou lover of BOuIs."
:I See below, pp. 156 fI.

122 CONTENTS OF THE PROPHETIC FAIT!I
reason, ,ve shall naturally ask ,vhether the Bible, Old
Testament and N e,v, assists us to a solution of our
difficulties. But for the present ,ve are only con..
sidering ,vhat the Biblical doctrine of God affirms.
Certainly, then, it affirms that the absolute and supreme
Being is perfect righteousness and ungrudging love.
And certainly this doctrine is presented not as an
argument to convinr..e us, but as a word of God Himself
to bc believed and realized in the responsive experience
of faith.
4. God the Creator.-As has been already noticed,
the prophetic conception of God insisted upon His
presence everywhere, as the spirit of life and order in
all things. Hence it coalesced easily with the philo-
sophic doctrine of the divine reason immanent in the
world, '\vhich occupied the minds of thinking men
,vhen the Christian religion began its course. But
this popular philosophy got no farther than this
recognition of a rational soul or spirit of the world;
or if it did conceive of God as transcendent, He ,vas
so transcendent as to be inaccessible, abstract, and
indifferent to men. But the God who reveals Himself
to the prophets is indeed intimately concerned in all
things that are, but in Himself is absolutely distinct
from them as their Creator.
Indeed, the intensely personal and moral conception
of God ,vhich possessed the prophets made impossible
to them any confusion of God with nature. It lifted
Him into absolute distinctness or transcendence.
This idea is vividly expressed in the prophetic horror
of idolatry. The prophets almost ,veary us by their
alternate denunciation and ridicule of idolatry.
Philosophy has been generally able to ma.ke terms with
idolatry. God is in all things-that is the farthest
point to "Thich it can get. Therefore, though the

THE CREATOR 123
popular myths about the gods are childish and foolish,
it can sympathize ,,'ith the tendency to see God in
t his and that. Only in this and that can the vulgar
,vorship the All in all. This philosophic tendency
to tolerate idolatry is familiar in ancient times, and
it is obvious in the sympathetic attitude to,vards
idolatry of a great many moderns. l
They show themselves restive under the denuncia-
tions of idolatry alike of the ancient prophets and
the modern missionaries. But such denunciations
are inseparable from the prophetic belief which will
tolerate no confusion of the creature ,,"ith the
Creator, of nature ,vith God. Ho,,"ever true it be
that God is every,vhere, yet the first thought of Him
must be as absolutely distinct from everything.
Whatever be the grades of creation, yet these dis-
tinctions of higher and lower are as nothing compared
,vith the absolute distinction bet,veen the Creator and
the works of His hands. \Vhat inspires the prophetic
denunciation of idolatry is the feeling that it involves
a senseless insult to the Creator by confusing Him
,vith His creatures.
So also the idea of God as Creator lies at the heart
of their claim for hun1ility in man, and their denuncia-
tion of pride. If, as pantheistic philosophy conceived,
a man, in respect of his reason, is a part of the univer-
sal reason or God, destined ultimately, after all the
defilements and hindrances due to his temporary in-
carceration in the body, to return to the Divine Being,
humility might seem a grovelling quality un,vorthy

1 See Pratt's Religious Oonsciousness, p. 276: U :Much more ma.y
thus be said in defence of the practice of 'idolatry' than most of
us have been brought up to suppose. It is based upon a. perfectly
Bound psychological principle, and it appeals to 8 widely felt human
need. "

12' CONTENTS OF THE PROPHETIC FAITH
of a rational being, and pride a legitimate expression
of his true nature, God and man being essentially one
interdependent being. But all this mode of con-
ceiving the relation of man to God is by the prophets
rendered ilnpossible. !\Ian is not a part of God, but
the creature of God. His relation to God is one of
absolute dependence, as for the beginning of his
existence so moment by moment for its continuance.
This is the ground of humility. This is what makes
all pride or boasting preposterous. And if humility
is in effect nothing less than a servile spirit, that is
because God has been pleased to make nlan in IIis
o,vn image and likeness, to admit him to His friend-
ship, and to make him His vicegerent in the ,vorld
,vhich he inhabits. 1
Once more, the transcendence of God the Creator
involves His unconditional spirituality. lIe is
present in all things but unconfused. Implicated
in no conditions of time and space, and essentially tied
to no requirements of any special sanctuary, "God
is spirit; and they that ,vorship him must ,vorship in
spirit and truth." I And again ,ve must notice that
if the Je,vish thought of God is gradually lifted to this
highest level, it is not by the process of reasoned
reflection, but by the way of inspired utterances.
" Thus saith the high and holy one that inhabiteth
eternity." I
5. '1'/ze Freedo1n of
lall.-But ho,v, then, if God is
the Creator, responsible for the existence of all that
is, is His character for goodness to be maintained in
vie,v of the evil and misery of the ,vorld? The
ans,ver of the prophets to this portentous question

1 Cf. the mixture of humility with exultation in Ps. viii. or in the
Magnificat of :Ma.ry.
2 John iv. 24. · ISB. lvii. 1:1.

THE FREEDOM OF
IAN

12ð

is, if not complete, yet simple, and, as ha
b
en said,
it is expressed or implied every,vhere. It attributes
the mass of evil in the ,vorld to the lawlessness of
rebel ,vills-to pride, greediness, ambition, cruelty,
selfishness, jealousy, lust; and to the judgements
which those things bring upon individuals and upon
the ,,"orld, whether as their natural results or <,vhat
is perhaps only their natural results viewed from a
different angle) as the punishment for sin which God
inflicts.
There can be no question that this is the general
account ,vhich the prophetic scriptures give of the
presence of evil in the ,vorld. St. James, ,vho speaks
in the New Testament in the prophetic spirit, de-
scribes how the ungo\
erned human tongue, though it
be a little member, yet can disorder a ,vhole ,vorld,
setting on fire the divinely-ordered course of nature. J
The sins which inspire the tongue are jealousy and
rivalry. But ,vhat Jan1es says so truly of these
particular sins acting through human speech,
generalized so as to apply to all sin, expresses the
common mind of the prophets. And when St. James
further speaks of the fire of the tongue as kindled
from hell or " devilish " he is, again, representing the
common belief of later Judaism which, as confirmed
by Jesus Christ, the N e,v Testament writers share,
that the source and home of evil is to be found beyond
the circle of human nature in an unseen world of free
spirits.
\Ve should note that the insistence of the prophets,
and of the scriptures inspired by their teaching, upon
the reality of human freedom is unhesitating, and
is allowed to condition their doctrine, not only of

1 J a.lnes iii. 6; eee Hort'e
uggestive notes.

126 CONTENTS OF TIlE PllOPIIETIC FAITH
God's omnipotence (as already pointed out), but in a
measure also of His omniscience.
Everyone ,vho thinks at all feels the acuteness of
the question: If God kno,vs to-day, and indeed
from all eternity, what I am going to do to-morro'v,
how can I be really free? To me it seems that in
this sense belief in divine foreknowledge really is
incompatible, according to any standard of thinking
possible to us in our present state, ,vith belief in
human freedom. I can recognize that the whole
conception of absolute and eternal knowledge is totally
outside our present faculties. But within the region
of our present capacities for thinking, the two beliefs
are incompatible, and it is to our present thinking that
the word of God in the Bible is directed. The Bible,
then, does not concern itself ,vith the metaphysical
question. It contents itself ,vith saying, "At any
rate, you are free and responsible." That God is
po,verful over all and in all, and does not for a moment
allow the world or any single man to escape out of His
control, that He knows everything that is or can be,
and discerns infallibly the thoughts of men's hearts
and their tendencies-all this it would be easy to
" prove from Scripture." Also that individual men
like Judas, or classes of men, may have so fundamen-
tally chosen evil that they have no longer ears to hear
or wills to choose freely, and that their actions are fore-
known and predetermined-this also appears as true
but as abnormal. On the whole God is represented
as waiting on man, pleading with man, being dis-
appointed in man (" I looked that my vineyard should
bring forth grapes, and it brought forth wild grapes");
and it is impossible to " prove from Scripture" that
God knows generally how the individual man is going
to choose on each particular occasion. I repeat, the

THE DAY OF THE LORD 127
overruling of God is always maintained. No ,vill or
action passes out of His hands. All the disorder that
wilful men or spirits can cause is, as ,ve may say,
superficial. Under it and over it and beyond it is
the everlasting power and wisdom. Nevertheless,
,vithin the scope of the universal providence room is
left for free spirits to act. And God, so to speak,
keeps far enough aloof to let them act freely. And at
least His word never lets them suppose that He
knows beforehand what they will do.
Whether philosophy or science can raise any valid
objection to the doctrine of real human freedom is
another question which ,ve shall shortly have to face.
Here our sole object is to ask ,vhat is the intellectual
presentation involved in the Bible. l
6. The Day of the Lord and the lV orZd to Come.-As
has been said already, though the prophets recognize
so frankly the lawless liberty of men to thwart God's
purpose and disorder His world, there is no doubt
of the sovereignty of God-that lIe allows no fragment
of His world to pass out of His control; and, because
He is God, He must vindicate Himself at last. Thus
the prophets conten1plate unmoved the vast struc-
tures raised by human insolence-" the giant forms
of empires "-and speak against them, and against
every rebellious individual, the oracles of God which
announce their inevitable doom. And in the later
stages of prophecy, as on the lips of Christ and in the
New Testament as a whole, the-whole vista of history
is represented as closing in the Day of the Lord when
God is to come into His o,vn in His whole universe.
This is a Day of judgment and doom on all that has
refused God, and a day of realization-the perfect

1 On St. Pa.ul's doctrine of divine "foreknowledge," see my
Ephesians, p. 66.

128 CONTENTS OF THE PROPHETIC FAITH
kingdom or reign of God-for all that responds to IIim.
In the earlier stages of Israel's history, they were
taught to look for the vindication of God's purpose
here and no,v in this world. There was no glilnpse of
a life beyond. But as the sense of individuality and
of the worth of the individual soul developed in Israel,
and the accompanying sense of personal feHo,vship
with God, such as appears in so intense a form in the
Psalms, a ,vider horizon than this world became a
necessity. If God was just, then there must be a
life beyond in which He ,vould vindicate the justice
,vhich was plainly not vindicated in "the wild and
irregular scene" of this world. Again, if the soul of
man ,vas admitted here and no,v to the fellowship of
God, then this divine fellowship, in part gained hcre,
must be realized hereafter. So before the close of
the J e,vish canon the doctrine of the resurrection and
of the ,yorld to come has taken possession of the
J e,vish conscience, and it gains consistency and
definiteness in the Ne,v Testament. We shall have
to return to the matter at a later stage, ,,,,hen we come
to consider the full Christian faith. Here all that is
needed is the recognition that the message of the
prophets about divine justice and "the day of the
Lord" was found to involve the belicf in a resurrection
of the dead and of a world to come, and that Jesus
Christ in His teaching gave to these already established
doctrines His explicit and solemn confirmation.

Let it be said again, the whole teaching of the
prophets ,vas given for a practical and not a specula-
tive purpose. It was a "word of life," a message as
to how men must live. So also Christianity came out
into the world as " the way." It was a life before it
was a doctrine. But it ,vas a life which involved a

PROPOSITIONS FOR THE IKTELLECT 129
'\Thole body of truths about God and man: and though
these are affirn1ed for a practical purpose, they are
none the less affirmed as true. They must be true
in fact-and therefore truths for the intellect-or the
life proposed becomes impossible.
No,v, ,ve have been asking ,vhat are the intellectual
propositions ,vhich the prophets insist upon as the
,yard of God, and we have found then1 to be especially
these: that Jehovah, the God of Israel, is personal;
that He is the absolute Being, beside ,vhom there
can be none other; that He is in character perfect
holiness and love; that He is absolutely distinct from
all His creatures as their Creator; that He has given
to His creature man, and to other orders of spirits
dimly perceived, such nloral freedom and responsibility
as admit of their co-operation ,vith God or of their
resisting and thwarting Him on the ,videst scale; but
that as God is God He must fully vindicate Himself
over and in all His creation, if not in this ,vorld, then
in the ,vorld to come.
No,v, it cannot be denied that if these propositions,
which the prophets reiterate as being the word of
God, are really the legitÎlnate expression in human
language of God's own self-disclosure-that is, of
impressions, convictions, images, and communications
realJy wrought by God into the prophets' souls and
minds-a ,vhole ne,v body of facts and data is added to
the material on ,vhich philosophy must ,york. The
"word of God" must plainly be received in faith.
It is not the product of human reasoning. But so
accepted as true, it can be and must be the basis of
a fresh philosophy. So the Christian Church-,v hich
inherited the prophetic teaching, as it was rene,ved
and deepened in Christ-showed itself at home in the
highly intellectual and philosophical world of the
10

180 CONTENTS OF THE PROPHETIC FAITH
Graeco-Ronlan Enlpire. It sho,ved itself a body as ,yell
able to think philosophically as to live and die nobly.
Among its men of greater intellect it had no one
equal to the greatest of the Greeks-Plato or Aristotle
or, perhaps, Plotinus-but it had, especially among
its Greek Fathers, men capable of acute inteHectual
and philosophical discrimination. It was able to
assimilate and also to revise, add to and correct the
ideas of current philosophy. Thus out of the treasures
of its faith it enriched philosophy with a deeply
enhanced sense of personality as the most ultimate
and in1portant of categories; it assimilated the
conception of divine immanence in nature, but also
it contended strenuously for the conception of
the transcendent Creator independent and complete
in Himself; it used the conception of the Trinity in
God to make rational and intelligible the thought of
a God eternally alive and complete in Himself ,vithout
dependence upon His creation for self-expression; it
emphasized the idea of human freedom; it firmly
fixed in the ,viII and not in the flesh the source and
ground of sin; it introduced among men the pregnant
thought of the world as a scene in which a divine
purpose is slowly and progressively realized; it
showed Greek philosophy a way of escape from the
embarrassing dualism of matter and spirit. Thus it
enriched and stimulated philosophy while it used it
to gain intellectual coherence and expression for its
faith. And if it made mistakes ,vhich proved dangers
and hindrances to the later Church, that was largely
because at times it was more subservient to Greek
philosophy than to the conceptions of the prophets
and of Christ. I I must not no,v stop to dwell on these

t Thus I feel sure that it was a false subservience to Greek philo-
sophy which caused the Greek theologians to emphasize the im-

FAITH AND KNO\VLEDGE 131
points. All that I want no,v to suggest is that
Christianity sho,vcd itself from the first conscious that
the materials of its faith, shnply because its faith ,vas
true, required of it to enter into the field of human
philosophy, as well as of human life, and there, too,
to test all things and to show that it believed in human
reason as the gift of God.
Once again, in the thirteenth century, in the dawn
of the renaissance of humanity after the really dark
ages, the schoolmen, headed by the great Thomas
Aquinas, showed the Christian faith to be capable of
supplying a synthesis in ,vhich all available know-
ledge could find a place. Never since then has such
a complete synthesis, nor anything approaching to
it, been accomplished. For any such synthesis to be
again accomplished and accepted by a ,vhole civiliza-
tion, as the scholastic synthesis, taken as a whole,
,vas accepted, vlould be only possible if mankind or
Christendom were again to realize such an ordered
unity of life and faith as that common ideas or doctrines
could really prevail and become the current coin of
life. l From any such state of things we are far indeed.
But what cannot at present be dune for a whole society

passibility of God in a sense which evacuates in great measure the
meaning of the Bible. Also it derived surely from Greek philosophy,
and not from the Bible, the idea. of the essential indestructibility
of the human soul or consciousness.
1 Since the Renaissance there has been in certain regions, and
within our own country more than once, such a. degree of unity a8
has rendered possible the wide and - common acceptance of con-
structive intellectual work--expressing some sort of intellectual
synthesis. Thus Hooker's Ecclesiastical Polity, Butler's Analogy
oj Religion, Natural and Revealed, to the Oonstitution and Oourse oj
Nature, and on ß lower plane Archdeacon Paley's Natural Theology
andEvidence8 oJOhristianity, became classics, i.e. adequate expressions
in a book of the best common mind of ß whole community. But it
would be impossible to-day to conceive such a book appearing. The
U common mind" is lacking, except in group
.

132 CO
TENTS OF TIlE PROPI-IE'fIC FAITH
or civilization can be done for individuals and groups.
That is the only possible preparation for s0111ething
wider. Any individual or group of to-day, which
accepts the revelation of the prophets as a true dis-
closure of the ultimate realities of the universe, must
ask himself ho,v, on the basis of his faith, he can face
thc 'v hole sum of scientific and philosophic knowledge
of his time, and ,vhtther he can see his o,vn way to
an adequate synthesis. Perhaps, as ,vas suggested
earlier, the greatest reassurance that this is possible
is to be found in the fact that great scientific lnen and
capable philosophcrs, if they arc also believers in God,
as Christendom has bclieved in IIim, are not in
expcrience found to be hampercd in thcir scientific
or philosophical thinking. They bear ,vitness that
in thcir faith they have retained or found their
intellectual freedo111. But this is not enough. We
cannot be content ,vith the ,vitness of others. 'Ve
nced to be able to realize our intellectual freedom in
some sort of intellectual synthesis, or at least to see
the ,yay opening towards such a synthesis. Thus we
nlu
t approach the task of relating ,vhat ,ve have
gained from the prophets and Christ to the 'v hole of
our kno,vlcdge. 1
1 The Italian philosopher Croce gives an interesting appreciation
of the mediaeval historians, to whom he gives the preference over
their Graeco-Roman predecessors, in spite of their immense inferior-
ity to them in culture and ability, in this I'espect-that they first
viewed history as progress towards a goal, and that their pessimism
was thus irradiated with hope. They saw a divine purpose working
through scathing judgements to an assured end: see Peoria e storia
della storiagraphia (Bari, 1917), p. 188. But, in fact, it is the
Hebrew prophets, especially Ezekiel, who should have the credit of
having been pioneers.

CHAPTER VI

REVELATION AND REASON

Now,ve come back to the field in \vhich \ve made our
first efforts in the reconstruction of belief, unassisted
by any idea of positive revelation-that is, to the
world of natural kno,vledge, of the sciences and of
philosophy. In this field we had found ourselves up
to a certain point enlightened and reassured. We
had found that reason and beauty and goodness
cannot be regarded as merely qualities of our minds.
They belong to the universe of things. There is an
" eternal, not ourselves," ,vhich is at once reason and
beauty and goodness, ,vith which we can hold com-
InlUlion and co-operate. And this eternal being we
can call God and in a sense worship. And a belicf
of this kind has at different periods and in different
countries been the basis of 'v hat may be called a
natural religion for educated men. But we had also
found ourselves speedily dissatisfied and baffled. This
God of nature could be so din1ly descried. His
personality, His character, His purpose, on the whole
appeared to be so ambiguous that the question was
forced upon us-If there is a God, is it not at least con..
ceivable that He may have (so to speak) taken action
on His side, and disclosed Himself in a more satisfy-
ing manner in response to the anxious quests and
prayers of our groping 3nò thirsty minds and spirits?
133

Ll r Rtt'{ ST. i.f.ARY'$ COLLEGE

184 REVELATION AND REASON
After all, there is in the common tradition of Judaism
and Christianity, and indeed of l\iohammedanism
also, a perfectly definite assurance that He has done
so, and that the prilnary channel of this self-disclosure
of God ,vas the Ilebrew prophets, whose teaching was
the foundation on which Jesus Christ certainly built.
It has been on the assurance of this ,vord of God that
the civilization of Christendom has in great part
reposed. It ,vas incumbent upon us, therefore, at
least to investigate the great claim. We have done
so ,vith the greatest care ,ye could devote to it, and
we have found ourselves profoundly impressed.
Provisionally, but confidently, we ,vere led to the
conclusion that the claim is true and justified, and
the prophetic message really a word of God.
Then ,ve proceeded to analyse the intellectual con-
tents of this divine self-disclosure, and we found them,
beyond the possibility of reasonable doubt, to be as
follo,vs :
(1) That Godis a personal being-"super-personal,"
if ,vc like to say so, but at least personal-as a person
making His will known to us, and demanding of us
that we should deal with Him as with a person, at
once our unerring judge and our loving Father.
(2) That He is, at the root of things, the sole,
absolute, or omnipotent 1 being, though certain impor-
tant qualifications of His absoluteness are also clearly
indicated, as by His creation of free spirits who can-
not, consistently \vith their nature, be coerced into
obedience, and also by the essential perfection of His
nature.
(3) That He is the absolute creator of all that is :
perfect in Himself" before the world was."

1 The root meaning of omnipotent or almighty is not" able to do
anything," but" powerful in and over all things."

THE PROPHETIC CREED 185
(4) That He is perfect moral goodness-that God
is love.
(5) That man is purely a creature, but endovved with
reason and a real, though limited, freedom, qualifying
him for free co-operation with God, but necessarily
capable also of perversion; and that it has in fact
been perverted on the widest scale, and the moral
disorder of the world is due to this sin-that is, the
lawlessness of man, and of other free beings dimly
discerned in the background.
(6) Finally, that the purpose of God is to redeem
the sinful and disordered world; that His kingdom-
the realm of obedient wills-already exists and is
discoverable here and now; that it is the business of
good men to behave as its faithful citizens; and that
they have a sure goal in view, for in the end God is to
come into His own perfectly in the whole creation.
This is the final kingdom or reign of God, and mankind
is destined to immortal fellowship with God in this
world to come, if he has not by his wilfulness lost his
soul and excluded himself from the divine fellowship.
This is a singularly fresh and illuminating conception
of God and His purposes. Over long ages it has proved
itself capable not only of satisfying the moral needs
of the best of mankind, but of inspiring and main-
taining his no blest efforts. In the past it has also
given him intellectual satisfaction. But our kno,v-
ledge of the universe has grown enormously under the
illumination of the physical sciences; philosophy has
been very busy with its specùlation and its criticism;
historical criticism and anthropology have rewritten
our human records; and comparative religion has
made it impossible for us to be satisfied with any
restricted view of revelation. These new sciences
have, as we began by recognizing, upset the pre-

186 REVELATION AND REASON
viously current presentations of the revealed religion
on a very wide scale. And '\ve are bound to claim
the fullest liberty for science, and for reason in
all its legitimate activities, because reason is at the
last resort our only instrument of truth. Thus we
cannot play false to our reason, or be content '\vith any
crude antithesis bet,,"een faith and reason, faith, ,ve
find, being only reason in the making. If then, on a
fresh revie,v, ,ve find the data of revelation, as they
stand out so clearly before our nlÏnds, bringing us into
positive and apparently irreconcilable conflict '\vith
what seems to be solidly grounded kno,vledge, '\ve shall
be indeed be,vildered and thro,vn back baffled again.
Can ,ve find a synthesis, or a ,yay to,vards a synthesis,
bet'\veen these data to faith and the conclusions-more
or less definitive-of the sciences or of philosophy?
Or,vhere such conclusions are precisely ""hat is lacking,
can our faith contribute to the solving of other'\vise
insoluble questions?
Probably the greatest difficulty ,vhich ,viII emerge
for most of us ,viII concern the belief in the absolute
goodness of God, if He is also to be believed to be the
Creator of all that is. 'fhis problem '\ve ,yill face
under the head of philosophy. But first of all we will
enquire ,yhether, '\yith our recently ,yon faith in the
God of revelation, '\ve stand free in the ,vorld of the
physical sciences.

I
It has already been pointed out that exclusive
preoccupation '\vith the methods of the sciences has
tended inevitably to a materialistic interpretation of
the world. But such an interpretation ""e have
claimed, ,,,ith the encouragement of most of our

CONFLICT OF FAITH AND SCIENCE? 187
conten1porary philosophers, to set aside as quite one-
sided and untenable. It is our reason ,vhich con1pels
us to see spiritual meaning and purpose in the ,vorld.
It is our reason which forces us to interpret the material
in terms of mind and not mind in terms of the material.
But the current spiritual interpretation of the ,yorld
by the philosophers is a sort of pantheism. The
question no,v is ,vhether the distinctively Christian
theism-the religion of the prophets and of Christ
-raises any fresh difficulty from the point of vie"\v
of the sciences.
On the "Thole, the ans,ver is in the negative.
Science is increasingly disposed to recognize its
abstract character-which lneans that for its own
purposes it makes abstraction from the ,vorld as a
whole of certain departments or functions or aspects
of the ,yorld, and studies them apart from the residue
which is irrelevant to the purpose in hand. 1 In
particular it is not concerned ,vith origins. It neither
affirms nor denies anything about the source of being
and life. As far as I can see, there are only t,vo points
at ,vhich conflict threatens bet,veen the claims of
science and the postulates of revealed religion-(l) as
to ,vhether the Biblical account of creation is not in
such marked conflict ,vith the scientific account of the
origin of the universe as to discredit itself; and (2) as
to ,vhether the universe scientifically viewed can
make room for free ,viII. I
1. Science, then, presents us. with the universe, and

1 See Ha.ldane's Relativity, p. 40, and passim.
t Perhaps the appearance of conflict between Religion and Science
to-day is most serious on the question of the Fall of :Man. But we
had better postpone that question till we are in a position to consider
it in connexion with St. Paul's doctrine of Christ and His functions
-that is in the next volume.

188 REVELATION AND REASON
particularly that part of it ,vhich ,ve know more or
less intimately, as the scene of an age-long evolution
of matter and life, out of which, only at its last stage
and through infinite struggles, emerges rational and
spiritual life in man; which again only through long
ages, and that very imperfectly and intermittently,
has succeeded in asserting itself and realizing itself
in the ,vorld. But as regards material nature con-
fessedly the revelation contained in the Bible gives
no hint of such an age-long process. It gives a
picture only of sudden creations. "God spake, and
they were made: he commanded, and they ,vere
created." What are ,ve to say of this broad contrast?
I think a believer in the reality of Biblical inspiration
must admit in the widest sense that this inspiration of
certain men by the Spirit of God does not appear to
have carried with it any special enlightenment on
those subjects on which man has proved able, though
viith infinite labour, to enlighten himself. In the
broadest sense" the Bible was not given to teach us
science," and does in fact speak only in terms of the
science of its times. Its only concern with nature is
to affirm that all that exists is the creation of the one
God, and that His will is its law. But in the region
of human nature, with which the revelation is par-
ticularly concerned, it does present us with a picture
of evolution-that is, of a divine purpose only very
slowly and gradually, and after vast catastrophes and
infinite struggles, and as yet very imperfectly, realized
-nay, only beginning to be realized, though thou-
sands of years have intervened bet'\veen Abraham
and us. l Plainly, then, though the revelation did not

1 The Biblical expression "the ages of the ages" or "all the
generations of the age of the ages" (Eph. iii. 21) represents pro-
foundly the
dea, of slow process towards ß conclusion.

ROOM FOR HUMAN FREEDOM 189
do anything to teach men about an age-long process
of physical creation, yet it did give them a conception
of God's method in dealing with man which is in
agreement with the method which science now
discloses to us in nature as a ,vhole. Science, ,ve
may say with truth, has only brought our notion
of the creation of nature broadly into harmony
with the conception of the making and remaking
of man ,,yhich we find in the Bible. 1
To put this in other words-the Bible in its account
of God's dealings ,vith man-and this is the only
field of its professed inspiration-suggests a God as
unlike as possible to the" Great Emperor enthroned
somewhere outside the ,vorld, ordering it by absolute
fiats to be accomplished in a moment."
2. But can science make room in its universe for
the Biblical emphasis on human freedom, which means
that, wherever human ,vills occur, there are points of
spontaneity and contingency; and ,vhich also involves
the actual occurrence in the world on the largest scale
of much that ought not to have been and need not
have been, for this the prophetic religion plainly
requires? Or can it claim the right to declare free
,viII at the last analysis an illusion?
No,v, it may ,veIl be the case that neither our science
nor our philosophy nor our theology will ever arrive
at an adequate theory of the relation of the elements
of determination from beyond and spontaneity from
,vithin in human conduct. But for the sake of
simplifying theory we must not deny facts. And I
contend that freedom of ,vill is a fact and reality.
It is a fact of ,vhich we have direct consciousness

1 'Ve must remind ourselves that the :Miltonic idea that man was
created perfect and in full development is not suggested by Scripture
and is repudiated by the Fathers. See above, p. 10.

140 REVELATION AND REASON
that ,vithin the world of physical sequences there are
points-viz. human wills-,vhere the direction in
which the energy accumulated in the human organism
is liberated, as in this or that kind of action, is in
part determined by free choice.
We need not pause to ask how ,videly this clement
of freedom exists in the universe. Among our more
imaginative philosophers and men of science there
are those who treat it as highly improbable that men
should be the only free spirits, and postulate a uni-
verse full of them. But we need not concern our-
selves with ,vhat at this stage is purely hypothetical.
Nor need we seek to determine how much truth lies
in IIenri Bergson's view that only in dead matter do
"
e find the dominion of physical necessity, and that
,vhcrever life is, from its earliest stages, there also is
something indeterminate and free. We must, I think,
at any rate confess that the theory of determination
gained its strength ,vhen the characteristic sciences
,vere mathen1atics and physics; and that, since
biology became dominant, it has never proved ade-
quate to express the movements of life. Also, seeing
that life develops so gradually and, as it seems,
continuously into conscious mind and freedom, it is
hard to resist the impression that mind and freedom
belong to it in a measure from the beginning.
But leaving all these questions concerning the range
of free will in the universe aside, let us concentrate
our attention on the point in nature where moral
freedom becomes part of direct human experience.
At least in man there is something ,vhich the
sequence of physical determination cannot account
for, something totally different in kind to physical
determination.
The action of any mechanically determined object is

ITS REALITY TO COXSCIOUS
ESS 141
the resultant of the forees acting upon it in combina-
tion, as a billiard-ball touched by t",.o cues moves in a
line representing the combination of the t'\vo forces.
Obviously such mechanical formulas do not avail to
interpret vital movements. Yet though the move-
ments perhaps of plants and certainly of animals
appear to involve selection and choice, \ve cannot
know ,vhat happens as from within. But in the region
of the human consciousness the process of that portion
of our activities \vhich is deliberate and voluntary
discloses its nature quite clearly, and especially
clearly in the \vorthiest and noblest of our race.
There we have a scene in \vhich what we call (by the
use of a physical metaphor) motives appear as appeal-
ing to the sovereign will, and the \vill by choosing
betlveen motives gives preponderance to one, and the
others are neutralized, and the resultant action is
what it would have been if they had been exercising
no pressure. Nay, as ,ve often kno,v, the fact that
'\ve ,vere under strong temptation to yield to some
lust or appetite, but rejected the suggestion as un-
,vorthy, seems to give increased energy to the action
which contradicts the unworthy impulses, or, on the
other hand, if ,ve yield to temptation, the remem-
brance of duty deserted causes us to plunge all the
more violently into the un'\vorthy course \ve have
chosen. Here, then, in the region of human choice
we claim to kno,v that the energy stored in the human
organism is liberated in n10vements the direction of
'\vhich is determined by the choice of the ,viII-the
movements involved in doing right or doing ,vrong
respectively. Of the conviction that this is so we
may say '\vhat Zeno the Stoic said of sense impressions,
that it " takes hold of us by the hair and drags us to
assent." If I am not certain of free choice, I am cer-

142 RE,TELATION AND REASON
tain of nothing; and I n1ean by this that if I have done
wrong, if I have given my consent to the" lower"
motive against the" higher," I have done what need
not have been done and ought not to have been
done. \Ve may restrict as anxiously as \ve can the
limit of freedom; ,ve may point out that ,vhatever
we do \ve can only surrender ourselves to some
impulse from beyo
d-either, in religious language,
to the Spirit of God, whose service is perfect frecdom,
or to the lusts of the flesh, to obey which is to become
the slaves of sin-but that in neither case is there
pure initiative in the will. We may make the most
of all the influences of heredity and character.
Nevertheless at the last analysis you cannot rob the
will of the sane man of responsibility for the choice
by which it surrenders to one motive or another, and
thereby determines action in this direction or that,
so as either to promote the divine order or to add
to the moral confusion and la\vlessness of the \vorld.
And God Himself, in the disclosure of IIimsclf which
we have been considering, does not bid us think that
even He forekno\vs which way we are going to choose.
This conviction I could not surrender under any
pressure from science. For if I know anything, I
know it is true. But, in fact, it does not really
affect science. Science can only take account of the
fact that the energy first stored in the human
organism is then liberated in action. That it might
have been liberated in some other kind of action it is
not its business to affirm and it cannot dcny. It
cannot pretend, \vhether in man or in an animal, to
answer the question, What is the place of the ,vill in
the liberation of the energy? That can be known
only from ,vithin by direct experience in the soul of
man.

THE l\IAKING OF
IY SOUL 148
Without fear of discord, then, with legitin1ate
science, \ve must hold to the conviction that God has
created beings with the responsibility of freedom-
that \vithin the scope of His universal presence and
energy He has so far limited Himself as to leave room
for their free activity, ,vith all its disordering effects
upon His creation, when it is misused; and in
each act of our moral choice, however largely deter-
mined by conditions over which we have no control,
such as circumstances, heredity, and the character
generated by our whole past, we must recognize that
the determination is not complete-there remains a
spontaneous element in each choice which constitutes,
according as it is exercised, our moral ,vorth or our
sin, our moral liberty or our moral servitude.
This doctrine of freedom and responsibility rests
on an assurance than which nothing can be more
sure, because there is nothing I know so surely as
what I myself am. Objects I can only know as they
are presented to me from outside. The definition of
them for me must be in terms of such external
kno,vledge. But I know myself from ,vithin. It is
fron1 inside that. I discover the definition of self-hood,
though, of course, \vhat I seem to know for certain
of myself is confirmed by the consent of other selves.
I know that amidst all the forces, physical and social,
acting upon me, I am a largely self-determining
being, responsible for the making of my own soul.
I an1 therefore constrained to believe that the po,ver
which brought me into being, brought me into being
that I might freely realize the ideal of hun1an life
which presents itself to my conscience. Here, in its
freedom and its duty, lies the worth of personality.
The more I trust this consciousness the more it proves
itself by my moral progress. If I doubt or ignore it,

14-Jt RE,rELATION AND REASO

I sink in the scale of being. I t is nothing l
ss than
intellectual blindness to prefer to this direct con-
sciousness of myself from ,vithin, the conclusions
,vhich I might dra\v, if peT impossibile I could vie,v
the world and form my estimate of it, ,vithout any
such knowledge from within. 1

II
But ho,v do we find ourselves ,vhen, ,vith our re-
covered confhlcnce in God's real disclosure of Himself
through the Hebre,v prophets and in Christ, ,ve start
again face to face '\vith contemporary philosophy?
\Ve have found philosophy on the ,vhole affirming the
spiritual interpretation of the universe, and in some
sense the existence of God, but very much divided in
. judgement and doubtful in mind as to (1) ,vhether
,ve are justified in speaking of God as personal; (2)
,vhether ,,,'e are entitled to think of God as an eternal
and perfect consciousness, or only as gaining self-
consciousness in man and other rational beings, if such
exist; (3) ,vhether lIe can be thought of as the
Absolute Being or as only one element or aspect of a
,vhole that is more than lIe; (4) whether ,ve can
entertain the thought of God as the Creator, prior to,
independcnt of, and the absolute author of all tha

1 It appears as if philosophical intellectualism was always at work
to depersonalize the universe: see Pratt's Religious Oonsciousnes8,
p. 17, quoting Yon Hügel: " The intellectual and speculative faculty
seems habitually, instinctively to labour at depersonalizing all it
touches." Cf. an interesting article by F. C. S. Schiller on "\Villiam
James (Quarterly Review, July 1921, pp. 31, 35): "Ever since Plato
the treatment of personality has been involved in inextricable
difficulties, because the accepted theory of knowledge has found no
room for it." . . . "The academic attempts at dehumanizing
personality." Cf. also an interesting article by Dr. Relton in
Theology (S.P.C.K.), August 1921, on "The Meaning and Value of
Finite Individuality." See also note p. 170.

.

THE GOD OF PHILOSOPHY 145
exist
in the universe of things. We found it
again (5) giving a very uncertain sound, not only on
the question of the reality of human freedom, with
which we are not going to deal further at present,
but also on the question of the personal immortality
of human souls. Finally, though not so much on the
ground of philosophy, perhaps, as of common sense,
,ve find ourselves confronted with (6) a deep and
widespread protest against the doctrine that the God
"rho made the universe of our experience can be a
God of love.
Now, confessedly, the loeligion of the prophets
claims to assure to us the solution of all these diffi-
culties. It brings down the balancing scales certainly
on the side of the personal God, who is the only
absolute being and the Creator of all that is, who
has made man a free being, destined for personal
immortality, and who, in spite of all appearances to
the contrary, is perfect goodness, perfect love. What
we have to do now is to seek in all sincerity to see
ho,v our provisional faith in the revealed religion
stands towards the conclusions which our reasoning
powers, working on the basis of our experience,
suggest to us. And we must be honest with
ourselves-that is to say, if we must decline to
yield our reason into the keeping of ecclesiastical
authority, we must equally decline to be terrorized
by the authority of the intellectuals. History is
full of the record of their profound mistakes. We
have already declined to be satisfied with their
apparent refusal a priori even to consider the
evidences of God's positive self-revelation of Himself
in an historical process, of which the Bible gives the
record. As a result of this refusal, ,ve have been
profoundly impressed with the grounds for believing
11

140 REVELATION AND REASON
in the reality of this revelation. N ow again we
lnust claÎ1n to use our reason to the full ,vith regard
tü their a priori determination of ,vhat kind of Gud
is rationally conceivable; and history seClns to
"Tarrant in many directions a profound scepticism as
to the po,ver of a priori determination which the
human reason possesses.
1. It is not, ho,yever, in any distrust of abstract
reason, but by Illaking the fullest use of it that I aIll
capable of, that I, for IllY part, declare that I find the
conception of an impersonal God-an impersonal
mind or righteousness in nature-,vhich is the con-
ception of the higher pantheism, really far less
intelligible and far less rational than the conception
of a personal God. I cannot hold the conception of
mind or of truth or of purpose or of righteousness
except on the background of personality. In experi-
ence I only know these things as functions or qualities
of persons. No doubt the personality of God must
be something much greater and more comprehensive
than human personality. We may prefer to call God
super-personal. No doubt also, if at a later stage of
enquiry I find reason to believe that the divine
personality is cOIllplex and social, as the doctrine of
the Trinity represents it, I shall experience a certain
intellectual relief and enlightenment. But at least
Iny reason welcomes the assurance that God is 'v hat
the human person is-conscious of Himself and of His
relationship to aU things that in any sense exist,
capable of determinate ,vill and judgement and action,
and self-determined by essential spiritual character;
in other words, that the human personality is at least
a better image of God than mechanical force or
merely vital movement or merely abstract idea.
This, I suppose, is the substance of the Psalmist's

GOD PERSONAL 147
argument-" lIe that made the eye, sh3.11 He not
see?" If personality is the highest kno,vn thing,
lllust not God be at least that highest thing?
2. Again, I must profess that I cannot attach any
meaning to the idea, presented to us by so many
philosophers, of a God ,vho is eternal reason, order,
and purpose in the universe, but ,vho only attains to
self-consciousness after long ages in man. I can
understand, on the one hand, the idea of a slo,vly
realized purpose in the world, and of a ,vorld in
,vhich finite persons, endo,ved with the rational
po,,,,er to correspond freely with this purpose, appear
only late in its history, if behind the world and
prior to it there is the conscious mind of God. I can
understand, on the other hand, ,vhat is meant by a
universe which, through aU its main bulk, shows no
signs of mind or purpose, though I find decisive
reasons for rejecting this opinion. But this idea of
unconscious mind and purpose I find very difficult.
If I see in the whole universe a rational order, if I
see a purpose of beauty in the world prior in time
to man's appearance, and a purpose of fellowship
and love becoming dominant in the animal ,vorld
before man, the conclusion ,vhich my reason ,velcomes
coincides ,vith ,vhat the prophets proclaim as God's
,vord-that His conscious purpose is behind all, the
background of all development and all progress, and
the security of their final goal.
3. The revealed religion undoubtedly postulates
a God who is the absolute; not, of course, that the
universe is identical with God its Creator, but that
the God of the prophets, or the Father of our Lord
Jesus Christ, is the one and only ultimate source
of ,vhatsoever force, power, quality, or kind of being
exists in the universe, and that lIe contains and

148 REVELATION AND REASON
sustains in being all that is, and guides it to its goal,
and shall finally be "all things in all." This abso-
luteness of God must, as ,ve have seen, be qualified
so as to admit of the existence, by the creative ,vill
of God, within the scope of His universal activity,
of free spirits who, though they draw all they are
from God, yet are granted such spontaneity of choice
as involves the power of disordering over long ages,
though not in the final issue, the ,vorld as God would
have had it be-God, so to speak, standing far
enough aloof from such free spirits to al1o,v for their
dependent but spontaneous action. But the revealed
religion strenuously contradicts the idea of any
ultimate dualism or pluralism in the universe-the
idea of any original "matter" 1 or force or will
outside God or other than God. And in this it seems
to me to be in harmony ,vith reason. I think that
in the fullest sense it is the postulate of both philo-
sophy and science that the ultimate reality is one; and
that the only difficulty suggested by either experience
or reflection on experience is-,vhat ,ve must be
considering directly-the profound difficulty of
believing that the one ultimate force and law behind
the world and in the \vorld of our experience is
absolute goodness and love.
4. There is no doubt a revolt among philosophers
against the Biblical doctrine of God the Creator, and
a demand that we shall recognize that God and
nature are correlative in such sense that "'
e must
hold "creation" to be co-eternal with God, inas-
much as God only realizes Himself in nature,
and cannot be conceived of as existing prior to and
independently of nature.

1 See further below, p. 150.

GOD THE CREATOR

149

Thus Dr. Pringle Pattison 1 states the conception
which must be rejected in these words:
" According to this conception, God existed in all His
perfection and blessedness before the creation of the world.
He chose to create a world, but He might equally have
fore borne to create, and this abstention ,vould have made
no difference to His self-sufficient being. The ,vorld, in
other ,vords, is in no way organic to the divine life. . . .
It cannot be deduced from the essential nature of God."
This position is rejected,. and the ground of the
rejection is stated thus:
" To perfect knowledge and perfect goodness there can
be no choice, in our sense of the word, as dubiety
between alternatives and a making up of our minds
for one or the other . . . His action is simply the
realization of His nature."

Now, ,ve must be profoundly conscious that in this
discussion of what might conceivably have been, or,
in other ,vords, of the nature of divine choice, ,ve are
moving in ,vorlds too high for us. But we have seen
reason to believe that a self-disclosure of God has
been granted to us "from above," not as a conclusion
of human reasoning, but yet through human minds,
and in such a manner as has necessitated its expres-
sion in intellectual propositions; and these proposi-
tions, if they are necessarily inadequate to eternal
realities, must be the best image of the truth possible
under our present conditions of knowledge. And
there is no doubt that this reve]ation has both by its
first recipients, the prophets, and by its exponents,
both Je,vish and Christian, been held to involve the
self-complete and independent existence of God
" before the ,yo rid was."
1 In the volwne entitled Spirit, edited by Ce.non Streeter,
pp. 13-14.

]50 llEV"ELATION AND REASON
As has been said before, ,vhen Christianity Inakes
its historical appearance in the world of the Roman
Empire, it is found contending vigorously for its o,vn
specific theism against the current philosophic
pantheism, and especially contending for the concep-
tion of God the absolute Creator, perfect and self-
complete and free. On this it clearly felt that its
'v hole moral attitude to God reposed.
The formulas for ,vhich the Church contended ,vere
(a) that God created all that came into being" out
of nothing," as against the current Greek idea that
God ,vas eternally confronted ,vith a co-eternal
" n1atter " upon ,vhich all He could do ,vas to super-
induce "form." No,v that matter appears to be
resolvable into force, and force for a believer in God
appears to be shnply the putting out of II is will, it
is perhaps true to say that the danger from the idea
of a formless matter co-eternal ,vith God no longer
exists. The limitations on the omnipotence of God
in creation whieh ,ve are now called upon to recognize
are not those of an external and more or less intractable
material, but those ,vhich appear to inhere necessarily
in the production of a gradually evolving universe, the
very idea of ,vhich involves imperfection at each stage
and mutual limitation by its parts or elements. But
(b) the Church also contended for a distinction bet,veen
the being of God on the one hand, ,vhich alone is
absolutely nccessary and could not have been other-
wise, and on the other hand everything ,vhich belongs
to the created universe, ,vhich is not eternal nor
necessary but contingent upon the divine will. It
exists (so the forn1ula ran) "not by nature, but by
,vin." Philosophically it ,vas soon found that such
a conception of God as self-sufficient, prior to and apart
from all creation, ,vas facilitated by the doctrine of

PERFECT IN HI1\ISELF 151
the Trinity, which had been already accepted by the
Church on quite other than philosophical grounds.
This doctrine enabled the Church to think of God as
containing ,vithin Himself the full conditions of life
and self-realization-the Father eternally expressing
Himself in His'Vord or Son and Spirit, and in that
eternal fellowship realizing the full life of will and
kno,vledge and love; and enabled it also to think of
creation as the expression on a lo,ver plane of 'v hat
existed already in eternal counterpart in God. l But
this doctrine we cannot yet entertain. Its grounds
are quite beyond us. All that can be urged at this
stage is that no idea of God can be satisfactory to
our reason 'v hich at the last resort makes God depen-
dent for self-expression upon creation-that is,
represents God as ÌInmanent in nature and not
transcendent. And He cannot be spoken of as
transcendent unless He can be conceived of truly as
" living His own life" prior to and apart fro In creation.
Othenvise He becomes wholly dependent upon nature,
the soul of nature, and can only be said to become
conscious, in the sense that nature contains self-
conscious spirits in ,vhose consciousness God may be
said to be conscious and in whose moral goodness
God Juay be said to be good.! Here we are back in

1 This idea found support in John i. 3, according to the ancient
punctuation. "\Vithout him [the eternal Word] was not anything
made. That. which hath been made was life in Him," see R.V.
marge and "''''estcott's Commentary. "Thatwhich was created. . .
represents to us what was beyond time in the divine mind."
The idea is expressed in Emily Brontè's lines:
"Though earth and man were gone,
And suns and universe ceased to be,
And Thou wert loft alone,
Every existence would exist in Thee."
2 See above, pp. 69 ft.

152 REVELATIO
AND REASON
pantheism ,vith all its fatal moral and intellectual
weaknesses. For if God is only the soul of nature, we
leem to have no security as to ,vhich tendency in
nature-the morally purposeful or the morally in-
different, which seems far the vaster-is going to
prevail. God must be all that nature is. If we are to
vindicate, what ourmoral consciousness so imperatively
requires, the exist epee of right and of a supreme
n10ral ,,'ill over the ,vhole creation, personally
,villing the right and condemning the wrong, ,ve must
be able to believe in a God 'v ho prior to creation and
apart from creation has ,vill and character-that is,
is transcendent-a God who has His life and being in
Himself. I am persuaded that the only refuge from
pantheism-,vhich of course takes us back behind
Christianity, and all that it has won for the ,vorld,
upon the old Pagan ground-is to maintain that in
some real sense-which ,ve at least can only express
in temporal language-God is prior to creation, and
exists eternally complete in Himself in the full
blessedness of self..realizing being" before the world
was." I ackno,vledge that human reason could never,
by its unassisted efforts, have arrived at this concep-
tion of God the Creator 1; but granted, what we
cannot doubt, that it is involved in the revelation
of God, given through the prophets and in Christ, and
lies indeed at its very heart, I should contend that
reason must welcome it as its only refuge from the
pantheism ,vhich reason itself, in that department
especially ,vhich is called moral philosophy, is bOW1d
to declare unsatisfying and to seek to transcend.
I acknowledge indeed, with all competent theo-
logiani, that all hun1an thought and language ,vhich

1 So St. Thomas Aquinas.

PERSONAL Il\f
IORTALITY 158
ascribe to God priority in time to His creation I and
distinctive acts of choice between alternatives, is
inadequate thought and language, inadequate to the
eternal reality. The doctrine of the relativity of
kno,vledge in this sense we must heartily welcome.
The absolute truth we cannot know. But I suggest
that all this sort of language for 'v hich the Church
has contended, which is indeed the language of
revelation, is the only language which we can use
to express the transcendent truth, and the opposite
kind of language is fundalnentally misleading and
false.
5. The idea of the immortality of human souls,
which was the outcome among the Jews of the
prophetic teaching, and which Jesus Christ so
solemnly confirn1ed,. has marked characteristics.
First, it was reached wholly under the pressure of their
belief in God.' There ,vas first the belief in His
justice, which as regards individuals ,vas plainly not
fulfilled in this world, and n1ust needs have a larger
\vorld for its exercise. The school of the Sadducees,
it is true, still clung to this world as the only kno,vn
scene of God's government, and sought to find satis-
faction for their sense of justice in the idea of the
immortality of a good name handed down and an

1 I suppose the best phrase is St. Augustine's-not that creation
was in time, but that it involved time. Time and creation are
correlative.

:Mark xii. 24 and parallel passages.
a As is well known, the Jews were sedulously prohibited by their
prophets from any attempt to get into direct touch with the spirits
of the dead. In our day we need not question the legitimacy of
enquiry by trained investigators into" spiritualistic" phenomena.
But we need continually to prot.est that no doctrine of survival
which has moral value can be based upon anything else except faith
in the justice and goodness of God-of which faith it seema to be
an inevitable consequence.

154 REVELATION AND IlEASON
honourable falllily perpetuated. l But the conscience
and heart of Israel as a ,vhole demanded a real and
personal imnlortality. Secondly, it was the sense of
personal communion ,vith God, into which the soul
of man ,vas admitted, which made it at last impossible
to doubt that this communion begun here would
be perpetuated and fulfilled beyond death. Such was
the belief that J eßus Christ confirilled. It ,vas a
belief in in1mortality of so fully personal a kind that
it took shape ina doctrine not merely of the imillortality
of the soul, but of the resurrection of the body. This
particular form of the bclicf as it ,vas perpctuated
in Christendom is so bound up with the belief in the
resurrection of Christ that we ,vill defer its considera-
tion till a later stage of our enquiry.' No,v ,vc ,vill
only ask ,vhether philosophy has any valid objection
to urge against the belief in personal hnmortality.
No doubt philosophy is shy of it. i\S has been
already noticed, speculative thought tends to de-
personalize ,vhat it touches. And the belief in personal
imillortality is bound up ,vith the eillphasis on person-
ality as a far more inlportant category than any
abstraction such as thought or knowledge. These
we believe to be functions or qualities of persons.
Fully rational being is only known to us as the being
of a person who feels and wills and thinks. Philo-
sophers like Dr. Bradley and Dr. Bosanquet are fond
of speaking of personality as "transcended," "dis-
solved in a higher unity," "lnerged," "blended,'!
" fused," "absorbed." I fear I must understand
Lord Haldane in a similar sense. But I believe this

1 See EccluR. xl. 9-1 t, xliv. 10-15.

The grounds of beliof in Christ's resurrection are considered in
this volume in connexion with the discussion of miracles. But
its full import as a part of the whole meaning of Christ's person and
work is reserved for the second volume.

UNION NOT ABSORPTION 155
tendency to depreciate the distinctive personal self,
as if it \vere a merely temporary limitation on the
large life of reason or spirit, to be \vholly a nlÎstaken
tendency. I think the emphasis on personality both
in God and in man as the highest category, an
emphasis which \ve o\ve to Christianity, is one of the
chief glories of that religion, and one chief clue to
its po,ver of being the religion of common men and
not merely of an intellectual class. In fact, the
deepening of the sph'itual life, and spiritual vision
in the best of men, tends on the whole conspicuously
to make their personality more intense and more
markedly individual. He that loseth his soul by
utter unselfishness shall " save " it and " keep " it and
" ,vin "it. Personal character is a greater and deeper
thing than any quality of a person such as the po\ver
of abstract thought. Moreover, the communion of
souls in its most intimate form of friendship and love,
though it proves that personalities can in \vonderful
ways interpenetrate one another, does not even tend
to reduce the distinction of persons. It is, indeed,
between those most different that personal intimacy
is often most real and permanent. Finally, in their
relation to God the souls of men whom ,ve should
describe as most absorbed in God are not so absorbed
as to lose their proper and distinctive being. Paul
and Jolm the son of Zebedee and Augustine and
Theresa of Avila do not in this life show any signs of
becoming less individual by being united to God, nor
do they ever lead us to suppose that when they pass
the barrier of death it \vill be otherwise. They will
see God, they believe-not become God. l In a sense,

1 I know that Bomo mystics ha.ve used language which suggests
becoming God, but the conscience of Christendom has always been
shocked.

156 REVELATION AND REASON
the personality of God embraces all the ,vorld and all
finite personalities, but He has created finite person-
a.lities and given them the freedom to realize them-
selves in Him without losing themselves-to work
out their own salvation-surely not that the distinctive
personality so gradually and painfully won may lose
the supreme joy of offering to God its distinctive
contribution-its self. I think that our deepest moral
and spiritual experience-all the experience ,vhich
makes the belief that the spirit does not perish \vith
the death of the body a rational belief-leads us to
believe also that \vhat survives death must be our
personal self, purified and deepened and enlarged;
but not merged or lost.
6. \Ve remain now face to face with the only one
of the difficulties raised by philosophical or specula-
tive enquiry \vhich, to my mind, is really formidable
-that is, the question ,,
hether, in view of the vast
area of seen1Ìng moral indifference which the universe
in its enormous spaces of time and extent presents,
and in vicw of the seeming cruelty of nature and of
the mysterious po\vers \vhich control human destiny,
it is really reasonable to believe in a God \vho is both
the Creator and Sustainer of all that is, \vhose being in
some sort nature's laws must express, and \vho is at
the same time Perfect Goodness-Eternal Love.
This is a tremendous question indeed. I suppose
that in regard to it men in all ages have been differ-
ently disposed-some inclined to\vards optimism,
some to\vards pessimism. Sencca says in his day
that" the greater part of mankind complains of the
malignity of nature"; and certainly in our day the
effect of the war and its consequences has been to
itrengthen the forces of pessimism among us. There
are very many among us ,vho certainly have" the

CAN GOD BE LOVE! 157
will to believe," but ,vho find the belief that God is
love very difficult. The days seem to them far off
when it was possible with any plausibility to contrast
the "simple doctrine" that God is love with the
"elaborate and difficult dogmas" of the Church.
For they fecI that it is only the dogmas that Jesus
Christ is God, and His mind God's nlilld, and that
God, the God of nature, really vindicated Him by
raising Him from the dead, that do in fact sustain
their tottering faith and hope in God. 1 With these
dogmas, however, we are not yet concerned-only
,vith the positive content of the prophetic revelation
reaching its culmination in Jesus Christ; and as to
the content of this there is no question.
These prophets and this Jesus, " the prophet mighty
in word and in deed," proclaim with unhesitating
assurance and emphasis the goodness of the one God
,vho made and rules all things. And further, there
will be no question that this assurance is conveyed
to us-quite without arguments about apparently
adverse facts, but at least in full vie,v of all the facts
in nature and in the ,vorld of man which appear to
contradict it. It ,vas not the sort of truth which
their experience would have suggested to the prophets
,vhen the world was being trampled by remorseless
and blood-stained powers, or to the rejected and
crucified Christ. If they believed it and affirmed it
as they did, it ,vas as an assurance imparted to them
by God Himself in spite of experience.
It is not then an " easy" doctrine. But is it really
consistent with candid reflection upon experience, or
as we say, consistent ,vith the facts?
First, we must open our eyes ,vide to take in all
that is implied in the belief that God has created
1 Cf. 1 Pet. i. 21.

158 REVELATION AND REASON
hosts of free beings and made them his vicegerents
in the ,vorld, in spite of the fact that their freedolll
invol ved the pos
ibility of their rebellion, and that,
in fact, such rebellion or sin on the ,videst scale has
disordered the ,vorld and distorted its history.
That is, we are bound to say, a fact, and a fact the
full meaning of which ,ve do not readily realize. It
carries the vastest consequences. It is only ,vith
great difficulty that ,ve can represent to our ÎInagina-
tion ,vhat the ,vorld ,vou1d have been as God meant
it to be-that is, if sin and rebellion had not been,
or had been but a rare and intern1Ïttent tendency.
Even to-day, if the mass of men ,vould repent or
change their minds, and would set themselves to
serve God and do His ,viII, in a very few years '\ve
should have even in the dark places of the earth a
paradise instead of a hell. And it is not only over
human life that the influence of human perversity or
ignorance extends. A distinguished professor of
biology, ,vho is not an apologist for Christian doctrine,
Sir E. Ray Lallkester, assures us that not only the
mass of human diseases is due to sin, but that
"every disease to ,vhich animals (and probably
plants also) are liable, excepting as a transient and
very exceptional occurrence, is due to man's inter-
ference.'
1 Certainly thoughtless piety has con-
stantly misused the phrase "it pleased God to
order," or" to do'! so and so, ,vith regard to orderings
and doings which ,ve have the best reason to kno,v are
flat contrary to Ilis ,viII-of ,vhich ,ve can only say,
1 The Kingdom oj JJIan (Constable, 1907), pp. 33 f.: "It is a re-
markable thing-which possibly may be less generally true than
our present knowledge seems to suggest-that the adjustment of
organisms to their surroundings is so severely complete in Nature
apart from
Ian, that diseases are unknown as constant and normal
phenomena under these conditions."

THE 'VORLD AS GOD WOULD H
\ VE IT 159
,vith our Lord, "An enemy-some hostile ,vill or
other-hath done this."1 Now, we certainly have no
faculties adequate to ans,vcr the question whether
the gift of freedom might not have been given with
less disastrous results. It is a merely foolish question.
All ,ve can do is to recognize that correlative with
freedom is the possibility of sin, and that the world
as God made it and ,vould have had it be would
have been, as we can see, a ,vholly different world
from the world as it has in fact been. Also ,ve must
note that the deeply impressive voices that have so
continuously assured us that God is good, in face
of all their torturing experience of the world as it
is, have finally assured us also that His love has
eternity to work in, and is bound in the long issue of
things to do the utmost that love can do for every
single conscious human soul. At the last, ,ve can
easily conceive, every still conscious human soul
may be found saying, There is nothing that I
have experienced, however bitter and unjust and
humiliating at the time, which has not been for
good. I 'Ve are never entitled to forget the ,yarning
1 Cf. Jas. iv. 1: "Whence 'come wars and fightings among
you î Come they not hence, even of your pleasures that war in
your members f " There is nothing in Shakespeare's presentation of
human nature more impressive than the sense which he gives us in
his great tragedies of the almost boundless havoc in human societies
which 8 single will, obsessed with some violent passion or wilfulness,
can work.
2 Finally lost sou1s-only so by their own persistence in refusing
the known good and choosing the evil-I feel bound to believe there
may be. To believe that it may be so is, I think, bound up with
accepting the reality of moral freedom. But I conceive that the
lost also will recognize that the mind of God towards them was only
good. And though their awakening must be awful indeed, and the
figures under which it is described are so, I do not think an orthodox
Christian is precluded from hoping that the issue of hell, which is
the state of the lost, will be extinction of personal consciousness 01'
dissolution of personality.

lðO REVELATION AND REASON
of Bishop Butler--that from the point of view of
our present experience the world presents to us, at
the best, " a scheme imperfectly comprehended."
Next, we must steadily contemplate ho,v Inuch of
the progress of the world-not only the moral progress
of the individual soul, but also the progress of the
race, where progress has been-has been due to
suffering and to vicarious suffering. We have no
faculties capable of answering the question, What
place would suffering have held in the world if there
had been no sin? But in the "
orld as it is there
is alnlost nothing ,vorth having ,vhich can be won or
maintained except at the cost of pain. As Pamela's
parents said to her: "0, my child! Trials are sore
things; and yet without them, ,ve kno,v not our-
selves, nor what we are able to do."
I think that the rational result of these considera-
tions, faithfully and thoughtfully entertained, is to
remove a great part of the ",veary and the heavy
,veight. "
But there remains the oppressive feeling due to
the inconceivably vast spaces of nature ,vruch seem
to have no moral meaning or significance, and to
the awful consideration of the pain of anin1als. But
,ve need to restrain our imagination by attending to
our almost boundless ignorance in these directions.
For all we know there n1ay be no fact or force in the
vast universe which has not some attendant spirit
,vhose destiny is as much conditioned by it as ours
is by the world we inhabit. Truly ,ve have not in
our possible knowledge any, even the slightest,
reason to deny rather than to affirm such t1.
suggestion. We know nothing ,vhatever about it.
\Vith regard, again, to the conscious pain of animals,
though it remains to my mind that part of the

THE SUFFERINGS OF ANIl\IALS 161
whole " burden of the mystery" which is hardest to
bear, we cannot really estimate their joys or pains,
or the proportion of one to the other. The great
naturalists appear to have been mostly, like Darwin,
optimists in their estimate of the happiness of
animals. And so far as animals attain to conscious-
ness, have we any real grounds for denying that
their painfu1 contribution to the process of nature
may have some recompense in some kind of life
beyond? We have indeed, here again, nothing
approaching to knowledge. But I confess that the
glint of pain in an animal's eye remains, if not a
valid argument against belief in God's goodness,
yet, as often as my mind dwells on it, a source of
unrelieved discomfort. Of course, in regard to natural
processes as a ,vhole, we are bound to take note that
the estimate of nature as a "gladiator's sho,v,"
which was fashionable in Huxley's day, has been
greatly modified, and almost reversed, by the
emphasis which recent biology lays on the capacity
for sociality, co-operation, and "unselfishness," as
chief among the conditions ,vhich throughout the
animal kingdom make for success. Indeed, Thomson
and Geddes, in their recent manual, 1 dare to conclude
their brief summary of scientific reflection on the
subject with the words: "It is much for our pure
natural history to see no longer struggle, but love,
, as creation's final law.' "
On the ,vhole, I seem to Iny-self to stand in this
position. What I am conscious of is not a struggle
bet,veen faith and reason. No; it is reason in me
which demands goodness in God. If I am rationally
sure of anything, it is that I find impressed upon my
inmost conscious being the obligation of goodness-
1 Evolution, pp. 246-7.

12

162 REVELATION AND REASON
the sense that I exist in order to be good. And I am
,vholly unable to interpret this purpose of goodness,
which I cannot doubt to be real, except in terms of
the goodness of God. Thus it is reason in men which
makes them cry out for some sign of divine justice
and mercy. It is reason in Prometheus which, beyond
the cruelty of Zeus, cries out to some fundamental
justice at the roots of being. It is reason in Hecuba
\vhich, above the vain gods of Olympus and deeper
than the powers of Hades, invokes some eternal
justice, by whatever nanle called, which punishes the
wrongdoer. 1 It is reason in Antigone which, behind
and above the state law, adores a moral la,v which
is divine, and in obedience to ,vhich she is prepared
to die. Reason, then, welcomes the revelation
,vhich proclaims with such assurance the only word
which can make sense of the universe. And within
the region of human experience the truth of this
,vord of God, verified as it has been in the consciences
of thousands of the best of men, for ,vhom it has
passed from faith into kno,vledge or assured convic-
tion, presents on reflection no real difficulty. In the
r
maining region of the non-human universe I am
rationally bound to lay great stress on my inevitable
ignorance. I have no faculties enabling me to
judge how much suffering is inevitably incident to
physical evolution, or whether any system less full
of pain could have been created. There remain,
ho,vever, in this region of the ,vorld, certain elements
in reality which it is certainly hard to reconcile with

1 Euripides, Troadu, 1. 884. u 0 foundation of the earth ßIld on
"he earth having thy seat, whoeoever thou alt, hard for knowledge
_0 find, Zeus or Necessity of nature or 1t1ind of men-thee I a.ddressed
in prayer: for moving in thy silent path thou guidest mortal
destinies according to justice."

COl\IPARATIVE RELIGIONS 168
divine goodness; but I am sure they cannot reason-
ably be held to justify rejection of the assurance,
,,
hich so convinces me of its divine origin, as to the
goodness of God, and which, on the ground of
human nature, ,vhere alone anything like adequate
kno\vledge is possible for me, has justified itself so
fundamentally to the best men. If I stand before
Christ and listen to His assurance and reject it, I
seem to be self-convicted of wilfulness.

III
Comparative Religion.-Anlong the comparatively
new sciences ,vhich have disturbed old-standing
religious positions, we reckoned the science of com-
parative religions. As against the crude, old-fashioned
view of heathen religions as simply false, this new
science has been sympathetically investigating the
various forms which the religious faculty or instinct
has taken among various races and in various periods ;
it has sought to observe religion as a ,vhole among
men, to study its origins, its processes of development,
its moments of special illumination, its deteriorations,
its similarities and differences, and all its apparatus
of priesthoods, sacraments, mana, tabus, rituals,
and sacred books-all ,vith an impartial mind as so
many manifestations of one common spirit and
tendency. Then the question arises: Is this sort of
impartial study and appreciation of the various
religions of the ,vorld compatible ,,,,ith the belief that
one race, Israel, ,vas chosen by God to be the organ
of His special self-disclosure-a self-disclosure which
had its culmination in J esu
Christ, and through
Him was destined to become the catholic and universal
religion-the one all-embracing faith for mankind 1

164 REVELATION AND REASO

We may answer, surely, that there is no incompati-
bility. I cannot understand why this belief should
nlake us in any "ay desire to minimize or regard \vith
grudging eyes the truth and excellence which appear
in other religions. When Christianity came out
into the world of Greek culture, though it combated
vigorously ,vhat it regarded as the errors and corrup-
tions of Hellenism, yet, at least through many of its
greatest teachers, it ackno,vledged its large elemcnt
of truth and it assimilated its treasures, appreciating
it as having been, in some sense like the religion of
Israel, a preparation for Christ. It did tIns because
it believed that God left not Himself ,vithout witness
in any nation, and that the divine \tV ord or Reason
and the Divine Spirit were everywhere in the world
at ,york. This is the temper in ,vhich ,ve would
approach all forms of religion. If we find high
thoughts in Babylonian psalms, or in the psalm of
the Egyptian heretic king Akhnaton, or in the sacred
books of Persia, if we find a wonderful ethical beauty
in the wisdom of the Buddha or of Laotze or of
Confucius, or again a divine po,ver in the dramatists
and philosophers of Greece, we ought not to be in any
kind of ,yay scandalized. If marked similarities
to the ideas and institutions of Judaism and
Christianity present themselves in the sacramental
cults and rituals of many nations, we should be
delighted to note and appreciate them. All this will
be no more bar to our believing that Israel had a
special vocation to be " the sacred school of the know-
ledge of God and of the spiritual life for all mankind,"
than a sympathetic interest in the art of all the
world will hinder a perception of the special vocation
of Greece. We have already examined our reasons
for believing that Israel had this special vocation.

BUDDHISl\l 165
We contend that no religion can, as a school of
spiritual truth, be set alongside of Israel's. That is
a matter of evidence. At a later stage of our enquiry
,ve shall seek to estimate the claim of Christianity
to be the catholic and final religion, and its ethical
standard the perfect standard. That, again, will
be a matter for candid consideration. But granted
that those claims are true, they should generate
in our minds no kind of grudging jealousy towards
other religions. If Christianity is destined in the
providence of God to supersede them all, this,
,ve conceive, would be not by excluding, but by
including and assimilating to the fuller truth, all
the elements of value which each religion is found
to contain.
It is, of course, quite as possible to over-esti..
mate the merits of a non-Christian religion as
to depreciate them unduly
to under-estimate the
corruptions which it has nourished as to magnify
them.
For instance, it has become the fashion in many
quarters even ludicrously to assimilate Buddhism
to Christianity. But, as a matter of fact, they
embody radically different principles. Thus the
root principle of Christianity is that life in all its
forms is good as the gift of the good God, and that,
the closer our union with God, the more intense and
full ,viII our personal life become : as our Lord said,
" I am come that they might- have life, and have it
abundantly"; "I am the Life"; while the root
principle of Buddhism is " that life is the greatest of
evils," and Sakya J\Iuni "devoted all the strength
of his soul to free himself from it, and to free others ;
and to do this so that, even after death, life shall not
be renewed any more, but be completely destroyed at

LIBRARY ST..
iARY'S COLLEGE

166 REVELATION AND REASON
its very roots. So speaks all the wisdom of India." I
It is certain that a root principle so fundamentally
different from the root principle of Christianity must
produce essentially different fruits. To take another
example, it is easy for a scholar in his study to
frame an ideal picture of Indian religions; but the
missionaries see it and know it as it practically is :
they see its fundamental moral impotences and
pollutions. And to ignore the missionary's estimate,
and to accept the idealist's as true, is not either
3cientific or just. In this as in all other matters
we want a balanced mind. Nevertheless, if China
and Japan and India \vere to ackno\vledge the
Lordship of Christ, we should hope that they would
never cease to reverence their own sages of earlier
days or depreciate their debt to them..

IV
Biblical Criticism.-Finally, we ha.ve to llsk our-
3elves how our faith in the inspiration of the prophets
of Israel, and in the reality of the revelation of God
communicated through them to Israel and through
Israel to the worJd, agrees ,vith the results of the
newer science of historical criticism as applied to the
Old Testament.- Of course the answer to this

1 I quote these words from the sympathetic a.ccount of the
Buddha and Buddhism from Tolstoy's ConJe8sion (Aylmer Maude's
trans., Oxford Univ. Press), pp. 42-4; cf. Lowes Dickinson's moving
estima.te of Buddhism in The Magic Flute (George Allen & Unwin),
pp. 100-9.
2 To-day we ha.ve no de&rth of books which seek to give & fair
estimate of non-Christian religions. I may refer to J. L. Johnston'.
Some Alternativu to J estU Christ (Longmans).
I Of course historical criticism must apply itself equa.lly freely
to the New Testament as to the Old. But we have hitherto been
concerned only with its results as applied to the Old Testament.

BIBLICAL CRITICISl\I 167
question depends in great measure on whether this
newer science is believed to have yielded secure
results largely destructive of traditional vie,vs about
the Old Testament literature. This great matter
cannot be argued here. But I feel so certain in giving
an affirmative ans,ver, as the judgement of my o,vn
reason, that no weight of ecclesiastical authority to
the contrary could move me. There is, I think, no
reason to believe that the Church is qualified by it

legitimate authority to pronounce judgement on any
literary problem. That is a matter for free criticism.
I think such criticism has made it certain that (for
instance) the Law of l\Ioses as it stands in the Penta-
teuch presents to us successive codes of law of
different dates, and none of them due directly as it
stands to l\Ioses, though he ,vas the prophetic
initiator of the historical movement through ,vhich
they came into being; and the materials which
these successive codes embody are materials for the
most part having a long traditional history before
they were embodied in codes. Thus to take only
one example: it is, I think, impossible to maintain
that the developed law of the priesthood-with high
priest, priests, and Levites-as the law of the one
exclusive tabernacle or temple, dates back to l\losaic
times, or applies to the times of the judges or the
early monarchy.
Again, it is certain, in my judgement, that the early
chapters of Genesis-the acc
unts of Creation, Eden,
the Fall, the Flood-are not historical records, but
inspired folklore; and the subsequent records of the
beginnings of Israel are tradition, and not strict
history, actual memories of fact modified in tradition.
Later, beside the historical records of Samuel and
Kings, of Ezra and Nehemiah, you have in the books

168 REVELATION AND REASON
of Chronicles a partly imaginative history-history
written, not as it was, but as it should have been
from the point of view of the later priests and scribes.
And besides this, '\ve have in the Old Testament all
kinds of literature: devotional poetry, as in the
Psalms; moral stories, like Esther and Jonah, and
the stories of Daniel, ,vritten on a rather remote
historical basis; dramas, like the book of Job and
the Canticles; philosophy of a special kind, as in
the Wisdom literature and Ecclesiastes, and (what is
peculiar to Judaism) the later Apocalypses-much of
this literature being pseudonymous, as the latter
part of the book of Daniel, dating from the second
century, is written as in the person of Daniel, who
lived four centuries before, or Ecclesiastes in the
person of Solomon. And in some of the Prophets
there is, besides their genuine work, the work of
later prophets, such as "the second Isaiah"
(chapter xl. and onward), incorporated with it.
When such results are pressed upon believers in
the Old Testament, they are apt angrily to ask,
"Then ,vhat remains of our faith? " and I have tried
to convey the ans,ver in chapters iii and iv. We
must start from the solid historical ground of the
period of the ,vritten prophets. We must reassure
ourselves, on this solid ground, of the reality of God's
self-revelation. Then we shall find ourselves be-
lievers of a surety that God did" in many parts and in
many manners speak in old times unto the fathers
by the prophets "-that the Spirit, who is God, really
"spake by the prophets." That is the essential
thing. Then we shall recognize how the prophetic
spirit gradually purged and reinterpreted the folk-
lore and traditions of Israel to express moral and
religious truth instead of empty falsehood, and how

THE CONCLUSION 169
there were different grades and kinds of inspiration,
as in psalmists and wise men and codifiers of law and
compilers of stories for moral edification, all in differ-
ent degrees inspired by the Divine Spirit. So viewed,
the Old Testament not only becomes much more
interesting, but also holds its unique spiritual value
not in opposition to, but in harmony with, historical
criticism. It is in recognition of the legitimacy of
such considerations that our Anglican Convocations
have remodelled the question and answer which, in the
Anglican service for the Ordination of Deacons, is to
be put to those entering the ministry and is by them
solemnly to be ans"\vered. The question used to run
simply, "Do you unfeignedly believe all the canonical
scriptures of the Old and Ne,v Testament?" This
question remains, but the sense in 'v hich it is asked is
defined by additional ,vords, " as conveying to us in
divers manners the Revelation of God which is
consummated in Jesus Christ." And the ans"\ver,
which hitherto has been" I do believe them," becomes
" I do so believe them."

No"\v, I have tried to set out very briefly the result
in my own mind of bringing the intellectual contents
of the Biblical revelation to the bar of the various
sciences and of philosophy, acknowledging the juris-
diction of t.he courts in one sense and denying it in
another-denying their right to exclude a prior-i the
possibility or credibility of divine self-disclosure, but
aclLllowledging their right to test its contents by their
own sciences, seeing that, at bottom, the acknow-
ledgement of the validity of our reason is the only
basis of any kind of certitude. But we have not
found that the sciences or philosophy provide any

170 REVELATION AND REASON
valid bar to the belief in the divine revelation, the
reality of which impressed us so deeply. Accepting
the revelation ,vhole-heartedly as of God, we find
ourselves still free men ,vith free minds in the worldi
of philosophy and science, more free, we dare to say,
than the unbeliever and the sceptic.
Additional note to p. 144. I cannot understand how Dr. Rashdall
(Theory of Good and Evil..p. 317)can contend that to a.ccept determin-
ism, as he finally does, which certainly at the last analysis makes
the Bense of freedom, responsibility and guilt an illusion, makes no
flJerious difference to morality and religion. He admits that this is
" the most important question." He admits that " our knowledge
of the empirical facts is far too small to enable us to say that . . .
the hypothesis [of indeterminism] would be indefensible n if
,. a.ny demand of the moral or religious consciousness really necessi-
tates, or even strongly recommends" it. But he proceeds to argue
that it does not. This, I say, I find amazing. It is to me quite
certain tha.t if I had believed myself at the last resort necessarily
determined to do whatever I do, the spring of moral effort would
have been quenched in me. It is only the conviction of real freedom
and real reponsibility which makes resistance to evil impera.tive and
possible.

CHAPTER VII

THE HISTORICAL RELIGION
IT is true in a sense of the Old Testament religion that
it is an historical religion-in the sense, that is, that
it depends upon the belief that God revealed Himself,
not merely in the order of the world as a ,vhole, but
particularly and more fully in an historical process
in a particular race and period, extending from l\Ioses
to Christ. But this conviction rests upon no single
event or group of events which is open in any degree
to reasonable doubt. We have been able to study
its grounds without having to discuss ,vhether any-
thing actuaUy happened which critics deny or any
document is authentic ,vhich critics doubt. But the
case is quite different when ,ve advance upon the
ground of the New Testament. The faith which is
presented to us in the New Testament indisputably
centres upon a single person, in a sense in which it
would not be true of any other great religion. Thus
Buddhism centres upon Sakya l\Iuni, in that it regards
him as the discoverer of a method of escape from the
will to live with all its desires and illusions-that was
"the way" or "the path." The Buddha is a very
moving historical character about whom we know 8
good deal. But nothing depends upon the verdict
which criticism may pass upon the recorded incidents
of the life of the Buddha. "The way" remains none
the less to be followed by disciples all the world over,
171

172 THE HISTORICAL RELIGION
who accept the principle that life and the desire for life
is an evil and the root of all evil. " The ,yay " would
remain if the personal leader were proved a myth.
l\Iohammed, again, is believed in as a prophet, but no
more. His existence and substantially the character
of his teaching no one can doubt. I think myself
that no believer in the reality of the inspiration of
the prophets will be likely to doubt that he was ori-
ginally really inspired to restore, as he professed to do,
the religion of Abraham, that is the basis of the true
religion; and that his rejection of Christianity, so far
as he rejected it, is to be attributed in great measure
to the exceedingly debased form in which it was
presented to him. But there was nothing original or
unique in his teaching about God or man; and what-
ever the estimate ,ve form of this ,vonderful man,
at the beginning of his career or in its subsequent
stages, nothing much depends on any particular
incident which criticism is concerned to doubt or
deny.
But it is quite different when we come to consider
the religion of Jesus Christ as it appears in the New
Testament, and (let us say) in the Apostles' Creed, ,vhich
expresses its doctrine about God in a summary form.
Everything there centres upon the person of Jesus,
and the functions and aspects of His person, and (in the
Creed almost exclusively) upon particular incidents
of His life-His birth, His death, His resurrection, His
ascension into Heaven, His mission of the Spirit with
its consequences. These events enter into the sub-
stance of the belief. It is a belief that God has taken
action for man's redemption in such and such historical
events.
Not, of course, that the Christian Church has ever
been content with a merely historical witness. Christ

ITS MEANING 178
Himself was plainly aware that not the most miracu-
lous external events by themselves would change the
heart of man. "If they hear not
Ioses and the
prophets, neither will they be persuaded though one
rose from the dead." Thus the Christian appeal to
certain events in history has al,vays been balanced
by the appeal to a continuous spiritual experience of
need and satisfaction. It has expected the Spirit of
God, working in the hearts of men, to generate such
an inward disposition and experience as to make the
testimony to past events credible and certain to their
minds. And it has, in fact, been the ,vitness of the
corporate life of the Church, or of the lives of genuine
Christians-the saints, which has nlade, as it ,vas in-
tended to make, the message of their creed intelligible
and credible to others. Thus no one can reasonably
accuse Christianity of merely appealing to past
events. Nevertheless the \vhole continuous spiritual
appeal of Christianity to the hearts and consciences
of men rests upon, or is bound up \vith, a specific
\vitness borne by certain original eye-,vitnesses to
certain events. The inward assurance is made to
rest upon facts-as St. Paul said at Athens, "God
has given assurance to us (concerning his purpose in
Christ) in that he hath raised him from the dead."
It is because the asserted facts are largely super-
natural or miraculous, and because so much of spiritual
consequence is made to turn upon them-the whole
question, in fact, of God's redemptive purpose--that
the Christian records have been, especially in recent
times, the subjects of sharply critical examination and
many very radical and very different reconstructions,
through at least two generations of critics. No
doubt the existence of Jesus of Nazareth as a teacher,
and certain ideas as to the character of His teaching,

174 THE HISTORICAL RELIGION
may be said to be undisputed by any sane critic.
Nevertheless, the positive residuum left by the
criticism of, let us say, Harnack, or Schweitzer, or
IGrsopp Lake, is in each case disputed by other
critics; and the residuum ,vhich can be even ap-
proximately called undisputed seems to most of us
very meagre. In any case, it stands in very marked
contrast to the robust and confident religion of the
New Testament or the Creeds.
Its dependence on historical events, or events
declared to have actually happened, is constantly
spoken of as the disadvantage of Christianity, because
it is thereby rendered constantly liable to attack by
that singularly nervous and subtle and solvent in-
fluence, modern criticism. And thus many people,
from Ritséhl to Inge, have been anxious to dis-
embarrass Christianity from the elements which make
it obnoxious to this sort of attack. But the question
is whether they do not thereby disembarrass it of it

essential worth; or even ,vhether anything is gained
by calling the residuum Christianity. The strength of
Christianity-its po,ver of appeal to men of different
ages and classes and educations-lies, as seems to
me indisputable, in its being rooted in a person of
,vhom we have adequate, trustworthy knowledge, or,
in other words, upon the substantial historical truth
of the Gospels-not their critical infallibility, but their
substantial trust,vorthiness. If this is a position
impossible to maintain, or if the destructive criticism
'v hich has been so long prevalent in the intellectual
,vorld has its way, I do not doubt that" something
will remain," but it will be a residuum so intellectually
uncertain in outline that it will result in diverse
" schools of thought" for studious men-which will
not make much appeal to the common man, hard

CURRENT DOUBTS 175
pressed by life, and not inclined to subtle thought-
side by side ,vith different sorts of superstitions for
the vulgar, or blankly dogmatic creeds for those who
at all costs must have a definite religion and are
prepared not to think for themselves. No one can
contemplate such a return to the conditions which
preceded the advent of Christianity into the ,vorld
,vithout a sense of disaster.
The Christianity, then, of the New Testament or
of the Creeds, the Christianity which at its best has
proved itself a power of such incomparable force for
the redemption of common human life, is a distinc-
tively historical religion-rooted in an historical person
presumed to be adequately known, and in particular
crucial incidents concerning Him, notably His death
upon the Cross and His resurrection the third day from
the dead. And, because we are determined to give
our reason its full claim of unrestricted freedom, we
will not be guilty of the folly of ascribing too much
authority, or final authority, to the intellectuals of a.
particular epoch. The" intellectuals" in history,
even when they seemed to wield in their generation an
almost incontestable authority, have too often proved
mistaken, and their confident positions have too
often been abandoned. Thus at least their authority
must not restrain us from thinking and judging for
ourselves. So \ve will, with aU the openmindedness
of which we are capable, examine the claims made on
behalf of the Christ of tradition to be the Christ of
legitimate history, to see whether they fall, or per..
chance can stand.
That this enquiry may be freely made we need te
have in mind three considerations.
1. The first concerns the nature of God. Ma.ny
of our philosophers, like Dr. Pringle Pattison, appear

176 THE HISTORICAL RELIGION
to deprecate any attribution to God of particular
action along particular channels, as if that derogated
from His universal presence and action in the world.
This plainly prejudices their minds against the
" particularity" of the Christian religion. But our
ne,vly recovered or ne,vly acquired belief in the
self-disclosure of God through the Hebrew prophets
,viII not admit of. our entertaining this abstract
philosophical scruple. Here, we are convinced, is an
instance of God"s acting along a particular line by
,yay of inspiration, much more continuously and
intensely than in the world at large. His universal
action is found not to exclude particular intention
and particular action. And surely this is the verdict
of nature as a whole. God acts more intensely in
man's mind and personality than in rocks or beasts.
He shows more of Himself in the free moral conscience
than in the automatic action of plants. Again, the
spirit of beauty-which is God in one aspect-was
more intensely present in the Greeks than in the
Romans or the rest of the races. It is a fact to which
all belief in God must accommodate itself, that God's
general presence and action is compatible with His
fuller and intenser presence and action here and there.
And there is no a priori reason why His fuller and
intcnser self- revelation of Himself through the
Hebre,v prophets shou]d not have had its culmination
in the particular historical person of Jesus.
2. \Ve shall not for a moment be so foolish as to
entertain the idea of exempting the sacred documents
of Christianity from the severest and freest criticism.
Reason essentially demands that historical criticism
shall appJy itself ,vith equal and full freedom to every
document. But obviously historical criticism reaches
different results when it applies itself to different

FREE CRITICIS:\I 177
epochs and to different kinds of documents. It
reaches different results when it applies itself to the
legend of Arthur, the story of Alfred and the history
of Henry VIII, or when it applies itself in the Old
Testament to Adam, to Abraham, to Elijah, and to
Isaiah. '\1' e must apply criticism to all records with
the varying results ,vhich the records warrant. But
,ve must be very careful in each case that ,vhat we
are applying is really historical criticism, and not
what may be more properly called intellectual
prejudice. No doubt all historical criticism implies,
more or less, intellectual presuppositions-it must
come to its examination of documents with certain
canons of probability. But these canons of probability
must be very carefully examined and themselves
criticized. All good historical criticism must be very
submissive to the real evidence in each particular
case; and while it cannot do without praejudicia-
that is, general presuppositions, based upon its
general philosophy of experience-it must be very
careful that these praejudicia are not arbitrary
" prejudices "-whether ecclesiastical prejudices or
rationalistic. And to secure this, it is necessary that
the praejudicia of any current school of critics should
be exposed to the light and carefully scrutinized, so
that nothing should intervene between our judgement
and the evidence, which prevents the latter from
having its due force.
3. Thirdly, ,ve had better seek to estimate, in the
light of the general experience of mankind, the relative
value for religion of myths or syn1bols on the one
hand-that is, staten1ents or stories ,vhich cannot make
any serious claims to be literally true--and serious
statements of fact on the other. It is necessary to
con<;ider this question, because recent a modernists "
13

178 THE IIISTORICAL RELIGION
in religion, convinced that the miraculous narratives
of the Ne,v Testament cannot be historically true,
have been consoling thenlsel Yes, and seeking to console
others, ,,
ith the reflection that the creed and scriptures
contain confessedly nIany apparent statements of
fact which are only symbolic and not literaUy true
statenlents, and that no serious harlll to religion ,vill
occur if ,ve are compelled to go a little further and to
recognize that such phrases as " he ,vas born of the
Virgin," " he ,vas raised the third day fronl the dead,"
" he ascended into heaven," are not literalJy historical,
but have synlbolical value, synIbolizing the spiritual
truths that the birth of Jesus was providential and
His nature pure, that the apostles ,vere convinced by
spiritual visions that death had not triunlphed over
Him, and that His moral Lordship is a spiritual reality.
Now, ,ve cannot doubt that "symbols" or "myths"
(as Plato conceived them) have played a great and
beneficent part in religion and must continue to do so.
Thus (i) the Fathers of the Christian Church, follo,ving
St. Paul, have al,vays been forward to assert that all
our statements about the being of God as He is in
HinIself-the transcendental reality-are syn1bolical,
in the sense that they are the expression in human
language of a reality ,vhich we cannot really grasp
,vith our present faculties or expound in human
terms. "l\lan has no celestial language," and can
only express eternal things in the best phrases that
experience has provided him ,vith, confessing their
inadequacy. What they have contended is that
such phrases as " Three persons in one substance"
are the best phrases ,vhich human language can
supply; that they have divine authorization
behind them; and that to decline to use such phrases
because they are inadequate ,vould be to open the

l\IYTHS A
TJ) SYl\IBOLS

179

door to positively misleading denials or misconcep-
tions.
(ii) There is a \vhole group of subjects \vhich lie
at present outside possible human experience-the
beginnings of the \vorld, the end of the world, heaven
and hell and the state of the dead-,vith regard to
which there would be to-day very general agreement
to recognize that "\ve know nothing except in symbols
or myths, such as the stories of creation in Genesis-
,vlúch there is every reason to believe inspired of
God, but are none the less not historical-or the
visions of the end of the world and the dayof judgement
and heaven and hell. It is comlnonly said that in
early Christian days these stories or pictures \vere
believed to be literally true, and that it is a great
change to accept them as symbolic. Now, it is
certainly the case that in the n1Ìddle ages and under
the Protestant Reformation an undue literalism
prevailed; but in the first four Christian centuries
the principle of symbolic representation of all that
lies outside present human experience was at least
,videly accepted, and applied to the story of creation
and the visions of the end. About heaven and hell it is
commonly said that till recent days everyone believed
that heaven was a place above our heads and hell a
pit beneath our feet. If, ho,vever, we consider ho\v
Platonism had influenced the educated world, ,vith
its doctrine of nlyths or synlbolic stories about
creation and heaven and hel
, and how deep its in-
fluence ,vas on the Christian Church, or at least on its
educated melnbers and especially the Greeks, ,ve shall
be inclined to doubt this. Certainly Church teachers
frankly recognized that "he sitteth on the right
hand of God" was a symbolic statement and not a
literal truth. Certainly St. Paul, in his language

180 TIlE HISTORICAL RELIGION
about" the heavenly places," and ho,v we men on
earth arc already in Christ in then1, or in his language
about the dead ,vho sleep " in Jesus," does not suggest
a vault above the sky or a deep pit underground. I
fancy Paul and Origen and Gregory of Nyssa and
multitudes of others kne,v that statements about the
other \vorld ,vcre symbolic-necessarily symbolic, but
none the less vehicles for spiritual truth of the utmost
importance.
s.
AnY'vay, we- admit to-day that there is in Christian
scriptures and creeds a great deal of language, about
things which lie outside our possible experience, which
is necessarily symbolic, though the symbolisnl may
be divinely inspired and should, where it is merely of
human origin, be the language best adapted to
represent the truth of any \vhich we can use.
But the justification for all this symbolism is that
the things syn1bolized lie outside possible human
experience in the present world. And the distinctive
boast of Christianity has been that by a personal
incarnation God has in a quite new ,yay passed inside
the region of human experience; that He has taken
fresh action in the world of nlen and nature; that
the Word, ,vho is God, has been made flesh, and lived
and taught and manifested Himself to men, and was
by men rejected, and suffered and died; and that
God has vindicated Him by a resurrection from the
dead the third day after IIis death; so that his faint-
hearted disciples caInc to know for certain, on the
evidence of their O\Vll eyes, that the po\ver which made
and rules the ,vorld--the Alnlighty God-is on the
side of Jesus, and that He is sovereign Lord. N o,v, all
this may be true or not. But it s
enlS to me ridi{1ulous
to doubt that it is in the appeal to facts that the
specific strength of Christianity has lain. There is

SYl\IBOLS AND FACTS

181

a strength in the symbolism which merely expresses
human ideas and aspirations, and it may be an instru-
ment used by the Divine Spirit, but it is of a quite
different value to the strength of experienced fact.
And because a statement about ,vhat cannot possibly
lie within present human experience can be recognized
as symbolic without losing what strength it can have,
it is illogical and absurd to say that a statement ,vhich
professes to be a statement of ,vhat has actually
happened does not lose all its special force, if you are
bound to recognize that it did not happen as asserted.
It appears to me that in ignoring, as some of our
" critics" do, the distinction bet,veen the value of
idea and symbol in religion and the value of fact, they
are violating common sense. If Christ was not born
of a virgin, but only providentially born in the ordinary
way, the narratives of l\Iatthew and Luke cannot with
any fairness be described as the best expression in
human language of something ,vhich human language
cannot properly express; for the manner of the birth
of Jesus could have been just as truly expressed in
accordance with the fact as the birth of John the
Baptist, which is side by side with it in St. Luke.
As it stands, the story represents on this showing a
needless falsification of the facts. So it is with the
Resurrection. If the dead body of Jesus did really
see corruption like the bodies of other men, the narra-
tive which lays so much stre.ss on this not having
occurred, and makes so urgent a claim to be a narrative
of things as they happened, is (intentionally or other-
wise) very seriously misleading; because what
actually happened could have been quite truly de-
scribed in human language. A virgin birth and a
corporal resurrection recorded as facts cannot be
harmless and necessary symbols of actual occurrences

182 TIlE HISTORICAL RELIGION
which were in reality quite different, and which nlight
quite as well have been described as they were. l
We must approach, then, this question: Did the
historicaJ self-disclosure of God through the Hebrew
prophets really culminate in the way which the New
Testament represents-that is, in a person who
passed the measure of mere humanity, and in a series
of events connected ,vith Him, some of ,vhich at least
are conspicuously supernatural and miraculous? All
questions, ho,vever, concerning the person of Christ
are deferred to another volume. But the circle of
ideas about Christ's person and functions in the New
Testament is so closely bound up 'w'Îth the specific
Old Testament doctrine of God, with which this
volume is concerned, that we will devote ourselves at
once to two questions, which must receive solution
before questions about Christ's person can be pro-
fitably asked or ans,vered. (I) Can ,ve rely upon the
Ne,v Testament documents as historical, ,vhen we
treat them critically? (2) Can we regard the miracu-
lous incidents recorded as credible, supposing the
evidence appears to us to be cogent? Or in other
words, is it fair to say that, if ,ve believe the prophetic
teaching about God, which Jesus Christ so certainly
confirmed, to be really true, ,ve shall find that no a
priori reason remains in our minds constraining us to
disbelieve the witness of the New Testament to
miraculous occurrences; and conversely that what
makes that ,vitness incredible to so many intellectuals
of our day is that in fact they do not believe in
the God of the prophets and Christ, but have re-

1 Mr. Clement Webb has dealt admirably, as it seems to me, with
the relation of myth to history, both for Plato and for us (see God
and Personality, pp. 168, 175, 177, 179), and has spoken true words on
the value of a. distinctively historical religion (Studies in the History
oj NaturaZ Theology, p. 30).

TIlE QUESTIO
OF THE DOCUJIENTS 183
verted to a conception of the purely immanent God,
,vhich does not essentially differ from the conception
of God current in the Greek ,vorld ,vhich Christianity
su perseded ?
Let us seek, then, first of all, to obtain an estimate
of the historical value of the New Testament
documents in general and especially of those most
important for our purpose.

CHAPTER VIII

THE HISTORICAL 'VORTH OF THE NEW TESTAMENT

I

CHRISTIANITY presents itself, then, to mankind as, in a
special sense, an historical religion, that is as a Gospel
and a life centred in and based upon a certain group
of historical events-the life, death, resurrection,
ascension of Jesus of Nazareth and the n1ission of His
Spirit to perpetuate His activity in His Church.
History has proved the manifest advantages of a
religion '\\yhich thus makes its appeal to facts of
actual occurrence, and we have recognized also its
equally manifest peril, supposing it should appear
that historical criticism of a legitinlate kind can
invalidate the supposed facts. It is necessary,
therefore, at this stage to look to our N e,v Testament
documents and to ascertain whether we can trust
both the direct record of the Gospels and Acts as
properly historical, and the rest of the documents as
being in the main what they profess to be, and as
supplying therefore abundant evidence of what the
first generation of Christians believed and practised,
and of their general outlook over the ,vorld.
Now, in respect of the documents of the New Testa-
ments, the advanced critics of the Tü bingen school,
dominant half a century ago, and their followers, were
accustomed to assign nlost of them to comparatively
late dates and to unknown authors. This was the
view which called itself critical a generation ago.
184

REACTION TO'V ARDS TRADITION 185
But of recent years there has been, on these questions
of date and authorship, a marked reaction, of ,vhich
Adolph Harnack-the greatest, I suppose, of con-
temporary scholars in the Christian literature of the
first century-is representative. \Vhen he published in
1897 his Chronology of Ancient Christian Literature, the
follo,ving passage produced a sensation.:
"There was a time," he ,vrote, "and the general
public is still at that date, when it was considered necessary
to hold the most ancient Christian literature, including the
New Testament, as a tissue of deception and falsehood.
That time has now passed. For science it was an episode
during which she learned much, and after which she has
much to forget. The results of my investigations go
in a reactionary sense far beyond what one might call
the moderate position in the criticism of to-day. The
most ancient literature of the Church is, on an chief
points, and in the majority of details, veracious and worthy
of belief from the point of view of literary history. In
the whole New Testament there is probably only one
work which can, in the strictest sense of the word, be
called pseudonymous, it is II Peter. . .. I do not
hesitate to use the .word retrogression, for things should
be caned by their right names. In our criticism of the
most ancient sources of Christianity, we are, without any
doubt, in course of returning to tradition. The problems
arising from the criticism of the sources . . . as well as
the difficulties in the way of constructing true history
will probably present themselves, in a few years, under
an aspect essentially different from that they bear to-day,
to the majority of competent critics."

This declaration is accompanied with a good deal
of vituperation of critics as men "fixing their
attention on all kinds of details in order to argue
against clear and decisive conclusions." 1 This Ian...

1 Harnack, Ohronologie (Leipzig, 189ï), vol. i, pp. viii-x. This
Wß8 followed by Harna.ck's works on St. Luke and the Acts, entirely
reversing his previous opinions. See Sanday's Life oj Ohri8t

186 HISTORICAL 'VORTH OF NE'V TESTA1\IENT
guage, I say, created a sensation as coming fronl one
who had shared the more destructive opinions, and
who still in his beliefs about Christ renlained as far
renloved from orthodoxy as ever. We in England
who had watched the struggle bct,veen the destruc-
ti ve German school of critics and our o,vn conserva-
tive scholars, amongst ,vhom Dr. Lightfoot was the
greatest, sa,v in sucq language the recognition of the
fact that, on the main questions of date and author-
ship, the conservatives had gained a solid victory-not
a victory over criticism, but a victory of sane criti-
cism against those who were really misusing it for
ulterior purposes.
1. Let us then see how matters stand about our
Gospels. The canonization of four Gospels-that is,
their selection by the Church as the four authoritative
records of the l\Iaster's life-goes back to the middle
of the second century. 1 Let us no,v proceed to examine
their credentials, or at least the credentials of t,vo of
them-St. l\Iark and St. Luke.
As t9 St. l\lark we have the famous statement
contained in one of the fragments from the lost ,,,"ork
of Papias, the Bishop of Hierapolis in Phrygia-
"Expositions of the Oracles of the Lord "-,vritten
not later than about A.D. 130. This Papias, ,ve
ought to say, gloricd in not depending upon written
documents, but upon competent witnesses, and re-
lates how he had taken his opportunities of inter-
course with those who had been companions of
the first disciples of Jesus, or "the elders," as he

in Recent Research, p. 76, note 1. Sir 'Villiam Ramsay, the dis-
tinguished traveller, schola.r, and historian of New Testament times,
is another e:x:ample of a man who began with t.he Tübingen view, and
was converted by the evidence of facts and documents.
I See Burkitt, The Gospel History and its Transmission (Clarke),
p. 257.

ST. l\IARK'S GOSPEL

187

calls them. "If ever anyone came ,vho had been
a follower of the elders, I ,vould enquire as to the
discourses of the elders, ,vhat ,vas said by Andre,v,
or ,vhat by Peter, or what by Philip, or what by
Thomas or James, or ,vhat by John or l\Iatthew
or any other of the disciples of the Lord; and the
things ,vhich Aristion and the elder John say.l For
I did not think that I could get so much profit from
the contents of books as from the utterances of a
living and abiding voice." This, then, is his state-
ment about l\Iark and his Gospel.

"This also the elder said: l\Iark, having become the
interpreter of Peter, ,vrote down accurately everything
that he remembered of the things that "
ere either said
or done by Christ; but, ho,vever, not in order. For he
neither heard the Lord, nor had been a follower of His ;
but afterwards, as I said, he was a follower of Peter, who
framed his teaching according to the needs [of his hearers],
but not ,vith the design of giving a connected account of
the Lord's ,vords. Thus l\Iark committed no error in
thus ,vriting down some things as he remembered them.
For he took heed to one thing: not to omit any of the
things he had heard, or to set down anything falsely
therein." i

This account of the origin of St. l\Iark's Gospel ,ve
can accept as historical, unless it ,vere so rigorously
interpreted as to mean that there is nothing in
St. l\Iark's Gospel which is not derived from Peter's
teaching. Anyone ,vho reads the Gospel, and notes how
much of it consists of scenes in ,vhich St. Peter figures,
will feel its probability. S Taking it, as is now generally
done, for true, we have to consider ,vho this John

1 Aristion and John are regarded as still living at the time of his
enquiries.
2 Salmon's trans. (in the main), Dict. oj Chr. Biog., iv, p. 186.
S See Batiffol's Credib.ility oj the Gospels (Longmans), p. 126.

188 IIISTORICAL WORTH OF NEW TESTAl\IENT
:rtlark who wrote the Gospel was. We find him in
the Acts, 1 about fifteen years after Pentecost, in his
mother's house at Jerusalem, and this house we find
a place of resort for the first Christians. It must
have been a fairly large house, to hold the" many"
who "ere gathered together and praying. It had an
outer gate and a portress, like the gate and portress
at the high priest
house (John xviii. 16). There
l\lark must have enjoyed the fullest opportunities of
seeing and hearing the apostles and first disciples,
both men and women. He drank constantly at the
fountain head of that oral tradition ,vhich lies behind
all the written Gospels, that witness of the apostolic
company to what they had seen and heard " all the
time that the Lord Jesus went in and went out among
us, beginning from the baptism of John unto the day
that He ,vas received up from us." I He was among
the men (and women) whose special privilege it was
to treasure this witness. In his Gospel' there is intro-
duced the incident of the young man in a linen cloth
,vho was a spectator of our Lord's arrest. It is so
singular, and so irrelevant to "\vhat goes before and
after, that I do not think it can have any meaning
but one. It is like an irrelevant figure in a sacred
picture of the Renaissance ,vhich has in its mouth the
label ,vith the words Isle perfeeit opus. The young
man must have been the author of the Gospel. So
we should suppose that his familiarity with the
apostolic company was of long standing. Thus when
Barnabas and Paul returned to Antioch from their
visit to Jerusalem, which had been undertaken to
1 xii. 12, 25. I Acts Ì. 21-2.
8 xiv. ðl-2. \Vhether his mother's house contained the cenaculum
is matter of pure conjecture. That St. :Mark was the U youn

man" is something near to certainty: see Salmon's Human Elemenl
in Gospels (Murray), pp. 499-500.

ST. l\IARK 189
carry assistance to the Church of J udaea under the
threat of famine, John l\Iark, Barnabas's cousin, ,vas a
natural person for them to take back with them to
help in their work. He was closely associated ,vith
them in the early stages of the first missionary journey.!
But he left them before they went inland from Perga
to the Pisidian ...
ntioch-it is conjectured because his
training at Jerusaleln left him still unwilling to com-
mit himself to St. Paul's" liberal" platform in respect
of the ,velcome to be given to the Gentiles. A few
years later he is still at Antioch, when Paul and
Barnabas had their sharp contention as to whether
he ,vas a fit person to be a second time their com-
panion. As it was, Paul and Barnabas separated in
consequence of the displlte, and l\Iark went '\vith his
cousin Barnabas alone. There follows a gap in our
knowledge about l\Iark of some ten or t'\velve years.
Then '\ve find him with St. Paul in his prison at Rome,.
a trusted friend, but apparently just about to start for
Asia. Then later again in St. Paul's second captivity,'
we find him '\vriting to Timothy in Ephesus and
begging him to take l\Iark and bring him with him
(to H.ome), for" he is profitable to me for ministry." a
This ,vas no doubt
Iark's function-not originality,
but ministry to those greater than himself. A
year or so later, after St. Paul's death, Peter ,,,,,rites
from Rome, in his first epistle, I of Sylvanus, " a faith-

1 Acts xiii. /S. I Co!. iv. 10.
a That St. Paul was liberated from his first captivity in Rome,
which is described in the Acts, is rendered certain by the fact that
Clement of Rome, writing towards the end of the first century,
8Bserts (cap. v) that St. Paul went to "the limit of the \Vest"
before he W8B put to death. No one writing in Rome could mean
by this phrase anything but Spain: see Lightfoot's note. Granted
this, it soom!!l to me that it is unreasonable to doubt the historical
data of 2 Timothy.
a 2 Tim. iv. 11. I 1 Pet. v. 13.

190 HISTORICAL \VORTH OF NEW TESTAMENT
ful brother," who is to carry his letter, and of " l\fark
my son," who is \vith him. This reminds us of the
statement of Papias's elder-that he ,vas "Peter's
interpreter." The relationship indicated suggests a
prolonged connexion between the two men; and
presumably ,ve may fill up the ten or twelve years'
blank space in l\Iark's life ,vith the picture of him as
Peter's companion, wherever he may have been, hear-
ing his often-repeated teaching about the earlier
experiences of the t\velve ,vith their Lord, and either
noting it do\vn at the time or preparing to write by
storing it in his memory.
Wcll, no\v, after all these experiences, ,vho-outside
the twelve apostles-could be better qualified than
l\Iark to write an account of the ministry of Jesus?
He had lived so long in the atmosphere of the apostolic
witness. And when, \vithout overburdening ourselves
"ith con1mentaries, we set ourselves to the study of
his Gospel-how does it strike us? I speak for myself:
it produces upon me an irresistible impression that
I am in the presence of reality. I do not know how
often, after reading SOlne "critical" work having for
its aim to prove that even l\Iark's account is two or
three removes off the original facts, I have gone back
to read the little book itself without note or comment,
and received afresh this irresistible impression. I am
sure that I am here, again and again, listening to one
who records what he himself sa\v and heard-the
look of the face of Jesus, the tones of His voice, His
gestures, the movement and feelings of the crowd.
No doubt you have that feeling sometimes when you
read the best novelists. But this sort of realistic
power did not exist in the literary circles out of which
the Gospels came. And this particular Gospel is
singularly destitute of literary skill or grace. Besides,

HIS SOURCE PETER

191

the modern novelists describe for us ordinary human
nature. It may be safely conjectured that even
they would not have succeeded in producing out of
their imagination a life-like image of so supernaturally
conceived a person as Jesus. The Gospel, we feel
assured, is not the work of either the crude popular
imagination which fashions a legend, such as we get
in the apocryphal Gospels, or the individual imagina-
tion ,vhich produces an historical romance or adorns
a tradition. Here is the reall\lan in his real surround-
ings, as one saw and heard and bare witness. 1 And
this one, on internal indications, we believe to be,
as tradition tells us he was, Simon Peter.
I do not mean that it is all Peter. Suppose that
beside Peter's story of the feeding of the five thousand,
l\lark heard another story of a miraculous feeding, in
which the numbers ,vere four thousand instead of five
thousand, and seven loaves instead of five, and mistook
it for a different incident, and so gave us an account
of two events where really there was but one, this
would make no n1aterial difference to us. We are
asking not for infallibility, but for quite trustworthy
history.
It cannot be pleaded that Mark, even if he often
heard Peter tell the same incident, could not have
remen1bered his words so n1Ïnutely. On the contrary,
that ,vas the special faculty of the J e\vish disciple.

1 See Hawkins, Horae Synopt-icae, pp. 95-105. He quotes from
A. B. Bruce on this Gospel: "These marks [in the Gospel] are such
as to suggest an eye and ear witness as the source of many narratives,
and a narrator unembarrassed by reverence. This feeling, we know,
does come into play in biographical delineations of men whose
characters have become invested with sacredness, and its influence
grows with time. The high esteem in which they are held more or
less controls biographers, and begets a tendency to leave out humble
facts, etc."

192 HISTORICAL 'VORTH OF NEW TESTAl\IENT
l\Iark had been trained in Jerusalem presumably, in the
Je,vish schools, where exact verbal memory was the
very faclùty especially cultivated. He ,vould have
been trained to be an adept in this very thing. "The
good disciple," said the Jews, " is like a cistern built
of concrete, which does not lose one drop." 1 Our
modern education is on quite different lines. Also
the Synoptic records are even for us singularly easy
to remember, not only our Lord's words, but the
records as a whole. What ,ve should suppose is that
Peter gave regular instructions, in ,vhatever church
he was temporarily abiding, and selected a group of
incidents and sayings such as he considered best
adapted to his hearers, and that these were frequently
repeated, so that St. Mark could well reproduce them
quite accurately. This is exactly ,vhat Papias's
" elder " suggests to us.
It is often asked how it can be that there is no
indication, or so little indication, in l\Iark of a J erusa-
lem ministry such as the Fourth Gospel records, if
this ,vere really historical. But I think this question
is based upon a mistake. What gives the scope to
l\lark's narrative is mainly the selection of incidents
for the first instruction of converts made by Peter.
There was no intention of making a complete
record.
We take note that, though St. Mark must have been
very familiar ,vith Paul's mind and Peter's mind as
we find it reflected in their epistles, the narrative of
his Gospel is extraordinarily free from any influence
of a doctrinal kind derived from such experience.
All the atmosphere of the record is the atmosphere of
the first discipleship ,vith its ignorance and slowness
of spiritual ,perception; and the phraseology and
1 See Batiffol, pp. 162 f.

ST. LUKE

193

manner of teaching is that of Jesus and no one else-
even when, as in the case of the title " Son of Man "
or the method of teaching by parables, the phraseology
and manner had been quite abandoned in the churches
of apostolic foundation.
On the exact date of
Iark's Gospel, and on the
question of there having been more than one edition,
we need not d,vcll. The elder's information suggests
certainly that l\lark wrote when he was no longer a
hearer of Peter, that is, ,vhen Peter was dead, and so
Irenaeus tells us. We luay suppose the Gospel to
have been ,vritten, as it no, v stands, just after Peter's
death, say in A.D. 65-7. The suggestions which ,vere
abundantly made in Tübingen days of a second-century
date have no,v been abandoned.
l\ly contention is, then, that in John l\lark you
have a man admirably qualified to give us an exact
account of the story of the apostles about their
experiences with our Lord, and especially of St. Peter's
story, and that we have every reason to believe that
he has reproduced it with the most faithful and simple
diligence. St.
Iark's Gospel, then, has every claim
to count for good history.
2. Now let us pass from St. l\Iark to St. Luke and
the t,vo books ascribed to him-the third Gospel and
the Acts of the Apostles. There does not appear to
have been any question raised in early days as to the
authorship of either of these books. In the preface to
what is (I am not alone in thinking) one of the best
and most interesting cOlnmentaries on any book of
the Bible, 1\11'. Rackham's COlnmentary on the Acts,l
will be found a summary of the reasons for believing
the tradition to be true as regards the Acts and
incidentally as regards the Gospel. The following
1 In the JVestrninster Commentaries (Methuen).

1.Jt

194 HISTORICAL \VORTII OF NE'V TESTMIENT
points may be regarded as certain, in n1Y opinion.
(1) That the Acts is the ,york of one author, that is,
that St. !)aul's travelling conlpanion, who often
implies his presence at the scenes he records by the
use of the pronoun" ,ve," ,vas the author of the ,vhole
book. l (2) That the Gospel and the Acts are by the
same author. (8) That no one of St. Paul's travelling
companions can be put in plausible rivalry with
St. Luke "the beloved physician," to whom tradition
ascribes the books. ( -1) That the language of the
books themselves supplies the evidence that the author
was a well-educated man and most probably a phy-
sician, o,,"ing to his use of careful medical language. 1
Granted the authorship, a very interesting question
arises as to the date. The Acts takes us up to the
end of the second year of St. Paul's imprisonment at
Rome. Then it closes, as we feel abruptly, with an
adverb. Is it conceivable that if, as has been com-
monly supposed, the Acts ,vas written some fifteen
years or more later, the author could have given no
indication of the result of St. Paul's trial or of the
manner of his death; or that he could have given so
favourable an impression of the policy of the Elnpire
towards the Church, without the least hint that it was
so soon to pass into a policy of deliberate persecution,
under ,vhich Peter and Paul ,vould be martyred with
many others? Is it likely that no hint would have
been given that Paul ,vas lnistaken ,vhen he assured
the sorro,ving Ephesians that he would "see their

1 This was proved by Sir John Hawkins, Horae Synopticae, pp.
148 fi. Harnack has not recently added much to the cogency of the
proofs: see Headlam's ß,liracles, p. 166 n.
2 This was the argument of Hobart, 1rIedical Language oj St.
Luke. He overpressed his argument. But I think that. after all
deductions, enough ßolid ground remains for his argument to stand
upon firmly.

DATE OF GOSPEL 195
face no more"? 1 Are not all the probabilities of
the case met by the theory that the Acts was ,vritten
up to date, i.e. about A.D. 63, while St. Paul ,vas still
a,vaiting his trial, and that if the author had intended
to continue his narrative, his intention ,vas frustrated,
perhaps by his own death? This has been very
ably argued by Rackham-not for the first time.
When he wrote (1901) he had to reckon among his
opponents the famous Professor Harnack. But since
then Harnack has changed his mind and, reproducing
and reinforcing the arguments of IIa,vkins, Hobart,
and Rackham as to authorship, has finally claimed
it as almost certain I that St. Luke ,vrote the Acts
up to date, and that the Gospel, the first of St. Luke's
two volumes, must therefore have been ,vritten earlier,
and as the Gospel is based upon l\lark's Gospel, that
again n1ust have been accessible in A.D. 60 at the latest. 1
On the whole, I think those ,vho argue for this
position have the best of the argument. But I do not
want to lay stress on anything that is disputable.
Sir William Ramsay-,vho is unrivalled as an inde-
pendent investigator of the history and conditions of
the early Christian Church, by means not only of
the study of all available documents, but by con-
stant travelling, especially in Asia l\linor, where he
has had great success as a discover of inscriptions-
prefers a later date for the Acts ; but he has bèen the
most eager and strenuous advocate both for St. Luke's
authorship of Gospel and Acts and for his character
as an entirely trust,vorthy historian.
1 Acts xx. 25 and 33. In fact St. Paul returned to Asia. and to
Miletus, where this scene took place, if not actually to Ephesus
(2 Tim. iv. 20).
! Date oj the Acts and Synoptic Gospels (Williams & Norgate).
I But St. Luke had intercourse with St. Mark at Rome, and may
very well have seen his material before it was published.

196 HISTORICAL WORTH OF NEW TESTAMENT
Indeed, the vindication, by inscriptions and other-
wise, of St. Luke's trustworthiness on all that touches
the ROlnan Empire has been startling.
"The ground covered by St. Luke," ,vrites l\Ir.
Rackham, u. reached from Jerusalem to Rome, taking in
Syria, Asia
linor, Greece, and Italy. In that field were
comprised all manner of populations, civilizations, adminis-
trations-Jewish and Oriental life, 'Vestern civilization,
great capitals like Antioch and Ephesus, Roman colonies,
independent towns, Greek cities, 'barbarous' country
districts. The history covers a period of thirty years, which
witnessed in many parts great political changes. Provinces
like Cyprus and Antioch were being exchanged between
the Emperor and the Senate; parts of Asia
1inor, e.g.
Pisidia and Lycaonia, were undergoing a process of
annexation and latinization; Judaea itself was no\v a
Roman province under a procurator, now an independent
state under an Herodian king. Yet in all this intricacy of
political arrangement St. Luke is never found tripping. . . .
St. Luke is equally at home with the Sanhedrin and its
parties, the priests and temple guard, and the Herodian
princes at Jerusalem, 'with the proconsul of Cyprus and
Achaia, the rulers of the Synagogue andfirst men of Antioch
in Pisidia, the priest of Zeus at Lystra, the praetors, lictors,
and jailer of Philippi, the politarchs of Thessalonica, the
Areopagus of Athens, the Asiarchs with the people,
assembly, and secretary of Ephesus, the centurions, tribune,
and procurator of Judaea, the first man of
lalta, and the
captain of the carnp at Rome. Such accuracy would have
been alnlost impossible for a writer compiling the history
fifty years later. In some cases \v here his statements had
been impugned, St. Luke has been signally vindicated by
the discovery of inscriptions, as in the case of the politarch
of Thcssalonica and the proconsul of Cyprus." 1

The chief stunlbling- block in the ,va y of a high
estimate of St. Luke's accuracy as regards the secular
details of his story used to be his statement about the
first enrolment under Quirinius. 1 But Ramsay has
t l
a('kham, Acts, p. xlv. 2 Luke ii. 1.

HIS TRUSTWORTHINESS 197
made the reality of such an enrolment remarkably
probable; and inscriptions tend to connect it with
Quirin ius. At the worst, if Tertullian is right in put-
ting it under Saturninus and not under Quirillius, the
mistake is only a slight misdating, and Ramsay does
not admit even this. The method of enrolment by
"every man going up to his own city," which St.
Luke affirms, ,vas derided as absurd forty years ago,
but has been amazingly supported by the discovery
of an Egyptian papyrus on which is a census order
of a Roman governor (of A.D. 104) which precisely
orders everyone to go for enrolment to his own city.
And this is no,v recognized as a method of the imperial
administration in the provinces. 1
Granted, then, St. Luke's authorship, and bearing in
mind the vindication of his accuracy as an historian
in general, let us read his Preface to the Gospel. It
is in St. Luke's own Greek, the Greek of a cultivated
man, quite unlike the Hebraic style of the first part
of his narrative, where he is obviously relying on some
already-existing Aramaic narrative. Well, this
preface gives us a singularly convincing account of
St. Luke's intentions and qualifications. He notes
that the Roman gentleman, for whose benefit he
,vrites, had received instruction,. presumably such
as was imparted to all Christians orally, in the matters
of his story; he notes that t.here had been already

1 The whole matter can be Been sUmmarized in Box's Virgin
Birth oj Jesus (Pitman), pp. 51-66, and in Ramsay, Was Christ born
in Bethlehem? (1898) and Bearings of Recent Discovery on the Trust-
worthiness of the N.T. (1915), ch. xix-xxi. Ramsay, I admit, often
gives the impression of pressing his points a little further than they
will legitimately carry. In Pelham's Outlines oj Roman History,
p. 385, " Luke Îi. 1 " is cited as historical evidence.
J See" Those things whereon thou wast in.'ltructed." The instruc-
tion wa.s presumably oral. But the word used does not imply this.

LIBRARY ST.lvÌ RY'S COLLEGE

198 IIISTORICAL \VORTII OF NE'V TESTMIENT
many attempts to put the narrative of the first apos..
tolic witnesses into ,vriting, but he is not apparently
satisfied with these attempts. lIe has had the oppor..
tunity of tracing the events of our Lord's history
accurately from the beginning, and he is deterlnined
to give an orderly and trustworthy account of them,
for Theophilus's benefit, and dou.btless for the general
benefit also, as ,vriters do to-day when they write
an "open letter" addressed to an individual, but
intended for the general public. There is no claim
made by Luke to special inspiration, but only a claim
to have had the fullest opportunity of gathering
information and to have taken advantage of it so as
to be able to produce an accurate narrative. Not
that he is careful about verbal or minute accuracy,
as is shown by the apparent difference bet\veen the
summary narrative of our Lord's last appea.rance and
disappearance at the end of his Gospel and the more
exact account given in the beginning of thp Acts, or
by the three accounts which he gives, differing in
detail, of St. Paul's conversion: plainly it satisfies
him to give a truthful account without troubling
about minute accuracy.
And we can discern in great measure his sources of
information. He was St. Paul's constant companion
from the time of his second or (perhaps) his first mis-
sionary journey. In his captivity at Rome, St.
Paul bore witness that" Luke the beloved physician"
was with him, and under these circumstances he must
have had intercourse with St. Mark, from whom he
took the main substance of his Petrine narrative to
incorporate in his own book. 1 Besides this, there is
1 It is very likely that when Papias or his informant described St.
Mark as not having written what he wrote about our Lord" in
order" (see a.bove, p. 187), he meant that St. ?tla.rk's Gospel was UD-

HIS SOURCES

199

a large part of St. Luke's narrative, consisting
especially, but not exclusively, of our Lord's sayings,
\vhich is common to him with St. Matthew. Here,
also, it is commonly supposed they were dra\ving
upon a document or documents consisting in the
main of our Lord's discourses, which is commonly
known among critics as Q.l That there was such a
document or documents I do not think we can
doubt, and criticism ascribes to it a very early date;
but the scope of the document remains quite un-
certain. Besides St. }\fark and Q, St. Luke gives us
probable indications of other sources of information.
He mentions t'\vo individuals connected with Herod's
court-" Joanna the wife of Chuza Herod's steward"
and "Menaen the foster-brother of Herod the
Tetrarch "-and these persons probably account for
the special information which he obviously had about
matters connected with the Herods. Besides, he
mentions repeatedly a group of worn en who accom-
panied our Lord and ministered of their substance to
Him and His disciples, who were present in Jerusalem
at the Passion, and '\vho \vere in the apostolic company
after the Ascension,
Iary the mother of Jesus being
amongst them.! From this group we should suppose
Luke to have derived the narrative with which his
Gospel opens, after his preface-a narrative which
shows evident marks of coming from the mouth or
hand of a ,voman. The special mention of Rhoda
in the household of l\fark's mother probably indicates
whence he got his account of Peter's release; Philip

systematic and incomplete, and was contrasting it with the more
systematic and complete narrative of St. Luke. But we have lost
the context.
1 The first letter of the German word Quelle, " the source. n
2 See viii. 2-3, xxiii. 49, 55, xxiv. 10, 22; Acts i. 14.

200 HISTORICAL 'VORTH OF NE'V TESTAl\IENT
the Evangelist, ,vith whom" we " stayed at Caesarea,l
and l\Inason, the "original disciple," who accom-
panied Paul and his company, including Luke, to
Jerusalem, and ,vas to give them lodging there,'
,vould be good sources for all the earlier narratives of
the Acts. On the whole, it is obvious that St. Luke
had very good opportunities of " tracing accurately
from the first" the incidents of our Lord's life from
IIis birth to His Ascension, and the beginnings of
the Church before he hiInself became an eye-,vitness
of its expansion. We do not claim infallibility for
him in detail. But we have the best reason to
claÏIn for hÌln that he is a careful and well-informed
historian in direct access to those" ,vho from the
first ,vere eye-,vitnesses and ministers of the ,vord "
-,vhich is the claim of his preface.
His narrative is coloured by his disposition, which
is apparent. He loves to emphasize the humility and
poverty of Christ and His companions, and our
Lord's insistence on the blessing of poverty and the
danger of wealth; he loves to bring out the mercy
of Jesus and the readiness of the divine forgiveness,
which He proclaimed and ministered; he loves to
recall all that dignifies womanhood; he hates con-
troversy, we should suppose, and loves peace; and
probably he minimizes the amount of division of
opinion, as between J udaizers and Paulinists, that
there was in the first Church. But after all it was
the peace party which prevailed. And an historian
like Tacitus is not supposed to be a better historian
because he retaiJs the scandals of an earlier genera-
tion. In fact, the special characteristics of our Lord
,vhich he brings to the front were, we have reason to

1 Acts xxi. 8.

2 Acts :xxi. 16.

HIS CHARACTERISTICS 201
believe,1 really His characteristics-humility, meek-
ness, and gentleness. It is James the Lord's brother,
who would have been claimed by the J udaizers as their
leader, who speaks of "the ,visdom that is from
above" as "first pure, then peaceable, concessive,
easy to be entreated, without partiality, and without
hypocrisy," and declares that" the fruit of righteous-
ness is sown in peace by them that make peace."
He suggests that the peaceable spirit in the early
Church was the prevailing spirit, and would ,vin the
day, and that the violence of party, which he con-
trasts \vith it, ,vas destined to fail. Thus we shall
not call St. Luke a less good historian because he
preferred to stress this spirit of peace at ,york, and
to throw somewhat into the shade the acrimony of
partisans.
There is one other matter, which concerns the
Gospels generally, to which attention must be called.
The destruction of Jerusalem, like, for instance, the
French Revolution, created a chasm in national
history between what went before and what came
after. All the whole apparatus of the national life
of Israel-its parties, its proceedings, its temple-
worship, its interests, its centralization-was destroyed
'with the destruction of the city and temple by the
Romans in A.D. 70. A later writer who had not
lived in the old order would never have recovered
its atmosphere. But all the Gospels reflect that
atmosphere faithfully. The conclusion, emphasized
by Sanday, Harnack, and many others, is that the
materials of the Gospels were practically all in being
before the destruction of Jerusalem, and that the
after-time had no serious effect upon them. This
conc!\lSjoJ}. )y
may, I think, take for certain.
1 See 2 Cor. x. 1.

202 HISTORICAL WORTII OF NE\V TESTAMENT
I should ad vise a student to proceed at this point
to review the status of the Epistles, and to leave the
question of the First and Last Gospels. But a word
may be said in explanation of this course.
As to our St. l\latthew, it appears to have been
taken by the Church from the first as the premier
Gospel, and there is no sign of disparagen1cnt. The
well- known fragment of Papias tells us that" Matthew
compiled the Logia in the Hcbre,v speech, and each
man interpreted them according to his ability." I
think Lightfoot proved that the word Logia (oracles) 1
might refer to a Gospel containing incidents and
discourses alike, like our First Gospel. Also Papias
appears to mean by his use of the past tense" inter-
preted "-that by his time there \vas an authoritative
Greek version. But our version does not seem to be
a translation from a Hebrew original; nor does it
seem to be likely that one of the Apostles \vould
have been content to rely for the scheme and inci-
dents of his Gospel upon St. Mark's confessedly
very imperfect selection of incidents, as fully as our
First Gospel does. \Vhat appears to be most probable,
on the ,vhole, is that St. l\latthew really composed in
Aramaic a collection of our Lord's discourses with
some connecting narrative, and that someone
unknown, not long after A.D. 70, used this collection,
in combination with St. l\lark's narrative, and some
other material which came to him, to produce our
first Gospel" according to Ì\'latthew." We can rely
with great confidence on the bulk of the discourses
of our Lord in St. l\Iatthe,v; but ,vhere there are

1 There is a.nother interpretation of this word which would make
St. Ma.tthew's work 8 compilation of O. T. "oracles" which were
believed to ha.ve been fulfilled in Christ. But I think it mora
probable that Eusebius's interpretation was correct.

ST. MATTHE'\V AND ST. JOHN 203
hnportant differences in discourse or narrative
bet\veen St. Matthew and St. l\lark on the one
hand, and St. l\fatthew and St. Luke on the other,
and where we have independent narratives in " St.
Matthew" without other support, \ve want to kno\v,
and can find no answer to our question, whether ,ve
are dealing with the Apostle or with some unknown
Palestinian disciple. 1 In some three cases we have
to admit that prophecies from the Old Testament
have been allowed to modify the details of the narra-
tive of the First Gospel,. and in connexion with our
Lord's death and burial the author introduces material
which it is difficult to believe to be historical. On the
whole, it must be admitted that our St. l\Iatthew
presents in some aspects an unkno\vn factor and an
unsolved question, and (though it affects a very
small area of the whole) we had better rest content
at starting with St. l\iark and St. Luke; though even
so it must be said that the whole of the Sermon on
the
Iount and the parables in chapter xiii and
elsewhere, and the famous ending of chapter xi,
" Come unto me," even though they are unsupported
in the other Gospels, are self-evidencing and un-
questionable.
I have recently elsewhere expressed my reasons for
believing that St. John, the son of Zebedee, is really
the author of the Fourth Gospel, and that his scheme
of the history must be taken as true and used to
supplement the account given in the Synoptic narra-
tives, with which he was plainly acquainted, and
1 In the case of the story of the Birth of our Lord (Matt. i., ii.) and
of His reported sayings about the Church (Matt. xvi.) we shall have
occasion to examine the trustworthiness of our first Gospel later OD.
2 Matt. xxi. 2 (the introduction of the ass beside the colt) ; Ma.tt.
xxvi.15, cf. xxvii. 3-10 (the specification of thirty pieces of silver);

Iatt. xxvii. 34 (the gall).

204 HISTORICAL \VORTH OF NE\V TESTAMENT
which he intended to supplement and occasionally
correct, and that the discourses of the Fourth
Gospel must be taken as recovering from oblivion
very real and important features in our Lord's
teaching. To this last point we shall have to return
later, when ,,'e are considering the nature of our
Lord's person. Nevertheless, inasmuch as a student
WOll ld find himself " up against" the great mass of
critical opinion in holding this position) I should
advise him to defer the question till he has felt the
ground secure under him on the basis of the two
Gospels of St. Ì\'Iark and St. Luke.
Thus, then, ,ve may take it for granted that in
these t,vo Gospels vte have narratives by known men,
whose opportunities for knowing what the "eye-
,vitnesses" recorded were as good as could be desired,
and ,vhose narratives as ,ve read them are, in the
highest degree, convincing. We do well to saturate
our minds in these t,vo documents. \Ve shall find
ourselves on the most solid historical ground. Nothing,
I think, could resist this conviction, except a dog-
matic presupposition that the supernatural things
there recorded cannot have actually happened.
This dogmatic presupposition we shall have to
investigate carefully. For the present let us leave it
out of account, and let the Gospels make their full
. .
ImpreSSIon upon us.
From time to time we may meet people who are
moved by the consideration that if the astonishing
things recorded in the Gospels and Acts had really
happened, we should have heard more about it in
contemporary secular historians, especially the
J e,vish historian Josephus. But in fact this
argument, so far as concerns the historians of the
Empire, has no force. "Miracles," such as are com-

SECULAR HISTORIANS 205
monly recorded in the Gospels and Acts, were also
reported in the Roman Empire in connexion ,vith
sacred shrines and persons.! And though, as will
appear, the miracles connected with our Lord have
a very distinctive character, the mere report of them
would not have stirred the sort of excitement which
it ,vould excite in the modern world. The common
people of the pagan ,vorld ,vould have said that such
things had often happened, and the intellectual
sceptics that such things had al\vays been believed
by the vulgar. I\loreover, it was not the habit of
the literary classes to pay any attention to popular
religions. We are led to believe that the mystery
religions, ,vith their rituals and sacraments, ,vere
among the most important features of the society
of the Empire in the period coinciding with the spread
of Christianity, but the allusions to them in general
literature are very meagre. 1
Thus what Tacitus, the only serious historian of the
early Empire who remains to us (writing A.D. 115-17),
tells us about the origin of Christianity is as much as
,ve should expect. The name Christian, he says s_
he is writing to account for Nero's treatment of them
-comes from Christ, who was sent to execution,

1 E.g. The miracles of Vespasian recorded by Tacitus and
Suetoniua, see below, p. 258.
2 "No Roman historian, from Tacitus to the scandal-mongers of
the third and fourth centuries, ever wrote imperially. Their outlook
was strict.ly confined within the walls of Rome" (Platnauer,
Septimu8 Severu8, Oxford, 1918, p. 25). - "Of the manner in which
the Empire was ruled, of the condition of the provinces, they [the
Roman aristocratic writers] tell us little, and probably did not care
to know much" (Pelham, Outline oj Roman History, Rivington,
p. 436).
8 Annal8, xv. 44. It is possible that Tacitus borrowed what he
said about Christianity, as well as what he said about the Jews,
from the IIÙJtoriae of Pliny the Elder (A.D. 23-79). See Batiffol,
The Oredibility oj the G08pel (Eng. trans., Longmans), p. 36.

206 HISTORICAL WORTH OF NE'V TESTAl\fENT
under Tiberius, by the procurator Pontius Pilate;
"but the execrable superstition, repressed for the
momcnt, broke out again not only in Judaea, the honle
of this plague, but also in Rome, '\vhere all horrible
and shameful things flow together and maintain
thenlselves." But nlore, no doubt, nlight be expected
from the Jewish historian Josephus, who \\Tote in
the last quarter of the first century. lIe gives us a
brief but interesting account of John the Baptist and
of Herod's reason for putting him to death. lIe also
gives an account of the putting to death by the
high priest of James "the brother of Jesus 'v ho is
called Christ." As the text stands, there is also
some account of Jesus Christ Himself. As it stands,
ho,vever, it bears obvious marks of a Christian hand. l
I t is disputed ,vhether it is merely interpolated by a
Christian or whether it is a forgery. Whichever be
the case, ,ve have evidence enough that Josephus
knew something about Christ. But when he wrote,
Christianity was dreaded by the imperial authorities.
Josephus \vrote to make them favourable to the Jews.
His nlotive for silence about Christianity was obvious
enough. And if he ,vas almost wholly silent, it cannot
reasonably be suggested that it ,vas from ignorance.!

II
The Second and Third Gospels, then, and the Acts
of the Apostles are by known men-John Mark, a
menlber of the original apostolic company in Jeru-
salem, \vhere he lived in his mother's home, and then
the trusted companion of Barnabas, Paul, and Peter,

1 Dr. \V. E. Barnes, HuIsean Professor of Divinity at Cambridge,
denies this: see Testimony oj J08ephu8 to J. O. (S.P.C.K.).
2 The whole matter is discussed by Batiffol, Ope cit., lect. i.

THE FIRST TRADITION

207

and Luke "the beloved physician," the companion
of St. Paul; and these men had the best opportunities
of intercourse with those ",vho from the beginning
were eye-witnesses and ministers of the word," and
their narratives are found extraordinarily convincing.
We have, then, here documents which, judged by the
standards of history, are fully trust\vorthy, and they
would have been, no doubt, unhesitatingly received
were it not for the supernatural features of which
they are full and the tremendous claim upon men's
lives and thought which they involve. Whether these
features and this claim constitute any good reason for
disputing their trustworthiness we shall have very
carefully to consider. We leave the matter now and
proceed to consider the rest of the documents of the
New Testament-especially the Epistles.
But first something must be said about the pre-
suppositions of the Epistles and about their relation to
the Gospels.
The Epistles, like St. Luke's Gospel,! were not
written to convey to the converts their first instruction.
This they presuppose. And it is very instructive to
observe exactly what is presupposed. Thus (i) there is
constant mention of the holy nanIes of the Father, the
Son-the Lord Jesus, the Christ-and the Holy Spirit,
as of familiar persons, and of our Lord's atoning and
saving work, and of angels and evil spirits. On these
subjects instruction is plainly presupposed. (ii) The
disorders arising in the Church at Corinth at the Lord's
Supper and a particular phase of opinion about
resurrection lead St. Paul to restate precisely what

1 Luke i. 4, " That thou mightest know the certainty (or a.ccuracy)
concerning the things wherein thou toast instructed" --doubtless when
Theophilus became a Ohristian. 'The instruction was oral, no doubt.
But the word is quite general.

208 HISTORICAL \VORTH OF NEW TESTA
IENT
he had delivered to them at his first coming in the
form of a narrative about the institution of the
Eucharist and the death, burial, resurrection, and
appearances after the resurrection of Jesus Christ. l
In the latter case he specifies that ,vhat he communi-
cated to them was the same message as the other
apostles delivered. St. Paul else,,'"here alludes to our
Lord's being of the seed of David, and to the moral
characteristics of his life, " meekness and gentleness "
and humility, and to specific words of the Lord, I
as to familiar things. IIow much teaching about the
life of Jesus on earth ,vas given to St. Paul's converts
""e cannot exactly say. But the apparently quite
accidental disclosures of his first teaching about the
Eucharist and the Resurrection lead us to feel that
the amount may have been considerable. St. Peter's
converts received, no doubt, the substance of St.l\lark's
Gospel, so far as that comes from St. Peter. (iii) There
,vas definite instruction in moral duties and in the
Day of the Lord and thc judgement to come. I (iv) The
Epistles presuppose rudimentary instruction in the
meaning of the sacranlents. C (v) An acquaintance
with and acceptance of the Old Testan1ent as inspired
of God is ah,vays assumed. All these elements con-
stituted the tradition (paradosis)-the teaching which
\vas first delivered by the Apostles and which it was
the primary business of the Church to hand on I-this
,vas the "sound doctrine," the "faith once for all
delivered." Tills oral instruction, then, given to
the first converts, was the basis on which the super-

1 1 Cor. xi. 23 fl., xv. 1 fl.

Rom. i. 3; 2 Cor. x. 1; Phil. ii. 8; 1 Cor. vii. 10; 1 Thess. iv. 15.
8 1 Thess. iv. 1-3; 2 Thess. iii. 6; 1 Cor. xi. 2; Heb. vi. 2.
, Rom. vi. 3; 1 Cor. xi. 23 ; Heb. vi. 2.
I 1 Tim. vi. 20; 2 Tim. i. 13, 14, ii. 2 i Jude 2.

EPISTLES BEFORE GOSPELS 209
structure of all the written documcnts of the New
Testament ,vas reared.
N e:xt to this in order of tin1e came, not the ,vritten
Gospels as ,vc have them, but the Epistles or most of
thenl. St. Paul's Epistles disclose how manifold and
diverse ,vcre the special difficulties and dangers of
his different Churches, at Thessalonica, in Galatia, at
Corinth, at Colossae :-hence different occasional
letters dealing ,vith these difficulties, and emphasizing
and expounding the meaning of the Gospel in differ.
ent aspects according to local needs. Some of the
Epistles, indeed, have 1110re of the nature of formal
treatises, e.g. the Epistles to the Romans, Ephesians,
and Hebrews; but most of them are markedly
occasional, and need to be read in the light of their
circumstances.
Then, as time ,vent on, the need of written accounts
of the Lord's life, of the most authoritative character
obtainable, became evident, and the Synoptic Gospels
were ,vritten, all, I think, before or just after the date
of the destruction of J erusalenl. The ,vonderful thing
about them is that, though St. l\Iark and St. Luke, at
least, ha.d been living in the atmosphere of St. Paul's
preaching, yet their record of the Lord's life is alnlost
,v holly free from anything ,vhich suggests lat
r
controversies or developnlents. They have been
Inicroscopically examined for "Paulinisnls," but al-
most nothing suggestive of perversion, in the interests
of later controversies or tendencies, is to be discovered
-in spite of the fact that the tendencies of the time
were full of danger, and that ",vords of the Lord"
adapted to the needs of the Church would have been
found very useful. Nevertheless, these two Gospels
renlain, as far as ,ve can see, strictly ,vithin the
limits of the history as it was, though the authors
15

210 HISTORICAL WORTI-I OF NEW TESTA
IENT
knew so wen how the Gospel and the Church had
d
veloped.

III
Now we proceed to review the material presented
to us by the Epistles, and to ask ho,v they stand as
regards authenticity.
As regards St. !)aul's Epistles, I ,viH content myself
,,,,ith citing the conclusions of an English scholar ,vho
has more confidence than I can profess in the methods
of German critics and their English followers, and who
has published an able survey of the present condition
of the historical criticism of the New Testament.
"The n1ain result of our discussion has been to
establish the fact that out of thirteen Epistles
traditionally attributed to St. Paul we may accept
eight (i.e. 1 Thessalonians, Galatians, Romans, 1 and
2 Corinthians, Colossians, Philemon, Philippians)
as being genuine beyond any serious dispute. Of
the remaining five, there is still an appreciable
hesitation felt with regard to 2 Thessalonians and
Ephesians-a hesitation for which we failed to dis-
cover adequate grounds. The authorship of the
Pastoral Epistles must still be regarded as a problem
which has not yet been satisfactorily solved. 'fhe
position of the Pauline Epistles in the critical world of
to-day is one which affords the deepest gratification,
and is a fact of far-reaching importance. . . .
T"\\"entieth-century criticism has thus restored to the
Christian Church an inheritance ,vhich is priceless in
value." 1 I do not propose to stop here over the
question of the authenticity of the Pastoral Epistles,
though I do not nlyself doubt that in their whole
1
laurice .T ones, The New Testament in the Twentieth Oentury
(l\lacmillan, 1914), p. 293.

AUTHENTICITY 211
substance they are St. Paul's.) It will suffice at this
stage that we should be able to study the other ten
Epistles as his genuine ,vritings and reserve the
question of the Pastorals. The anonymous Epistle
to the Hebrew's is certainly not St. Paul's, nor have
we adequate grounds for attempting to determine its
authorship. But it is a document of great importance,
because it is the only document of the New Testament
which deals at length with the IIigh Priesthood of
Christ. The writer does not claim to be among" those
,vho heard" the Lord, but among their first disciples.'
The most probable opinion is that the little treatise
or epistle ,vas written to a J e,vish group in Rome or
Italy. It was used by Clement of Rome towards the
end of the century. And it appears to me quite
certain that it was written before the destruction of
Jerusalem. It is true that the sanctuary which the
author describes is rather, in its details, the tabernacle
than any of the later temples. Nevertheless, I think
the author could not have referred so frequently to
the sacrificial system of the Jews as still in being,' or
have refrained from pointing the moral of its complete
destruction, if he had written after A.D. 70. St.
Peter's First Epistle can be confidently taken for
genuine, t and there is no sufficient reason why we
should doubt the authenticity of the beautiful
Epistle of St. James, ,vho was put to death by the
Jews in A.D. 62, or the later Epistle of his brother
Jude. The three Epistles ascribed to St. John
undoubtedly cohere with one another and with the
Fourth Gospe!.' The only book of the New Testament
1 See appended note, p. 213. 2 Heb. H. 3.
8 Heb. viii. 4 f., ix. 6, 9, x. 1 fi., xiii. 10 fI. See Westcott's
Hebrews, p. xlii.
· See Jones, Ope cit., cap. vi.
ð See my Expoaition of St. John'8 Epistles (Murray, 1920), Preface

212 IIISTORICAL lVORTH OF NE'V TESTAl\IENT
,vhich it seems to me the evidence shows to be
pseudonymous is the Sccond Epistle of Petcr. That,
indeed, clahns to have been ,vrittcn by an apostle;
and it ,vas as bcing Peter's that it was at last and
after much hesitation acceptcd by the Church into
the canon. But ,,"e have no reason to claim
infallibility for the literary judgment of the Church,
and the evidence against it secms to me to be cogent.
Nothing remains to consider but the Apocalypsc.
Whcther this book belongs to the period follo,ving
the persecution of Nero, i.e. whether it ,vas ,vrittcl1
just before A.D. 70, or ,vhethcr it belongs to the
persecution of Domitian at the end of the century, or
\vhcther different parts of it must be assigned to each
period, is a very difficult question. Whether, again,
it can be ascribed to the same author as the Fourth
Gospel and the three Epistles is also an opcn question.
The external evidence is exceedingly strong for
ascribing it to St. John the Apostle. But, at any
rate, it was v
Titten at one of the t,vo dates named
above, by a prophet called John, ,vho claÎ1ns both
direct inspiration and authority such as secnlS apos-
tolic, and it discloses ho\v he interpreted the conflict
bct,veen the Church and the no\v persecuting Enlpire,
and \vhat issue of the conflict he foresaw, \vith a
pas
ion and a po,ver \v hich belong to no othcr
Apocalypse.
Enough has, I hope, been said to satisfy one \vho
is beginning the study of the origins of the Christian
Church and its real character and claim that he could
use the documents of the Nc\v Testament as a whole
,vith confidence in their authenticity and trust-
,vorthiness, if they "\\Tere records of ordinary events
or of an ordinary human person. It is, as ,ve shall
see reason to believe, not historical criticism properly

TIlE PASTORAL EPISTLES 2]3
so called, but something quite different ,vhich has
led to their being disputed.

APPENDED NOTE

ON TIlE AUTHENTICITY OF THE PASTORAL EPISTLES
The follo,ving facts seem to me to constitute a valid
ground for accepting their authenticity.
1. St. Paul's deliverance from his first captivity must
be accepted as a fact, on the ground that Clement indis-
putably implies that he fulfilled his intention of going to
Spain (see above, p. 189 n. 3). This leaves room for the
movements of the apostle referred to in the Pastorals.
2. The ecclesiastical situation disclosed in the Pastorals
harmonizes with that described by Clement as arising
before the death of the apostles-and by the apostles he
lneans especiaHy St. Peter and St. Paul. He is writing
to the Corinthians about the authority of the presbyters or
" bishops." He describes their origin: ho,v Christ was sent
forth from God and the Apostles from Christ-ho,v they
preached in country and towns and "appointed their
first fruits, then they had tested them in the Spirit,
for bishops and deacons" of the future converts. Later
he describes ho,v "the Apostles knew through our Lord
Jesus Christ that there ,vould be strife about the title of
the bishop. Therefore for this reason, having received
perfect forekno,vledge, they appointed the aforesaid, and
afterwards they gave an additional injunction that, if
they (the aforesaid presbyter-bishops and deacons)
should fall asleep, other approved men should succeed
to their ministry." What this additional injunction was
is iInpIied in the follo,ving sentence: "Those then
appointed by them [the apostles] or afterwards by other
distinguished men, with the conSent of the 'whole Church,
etc." 1 Here it appears that the additional provision
made by the apostles was that there should be, after
they were gone, " distinguished men" ,vith an authority
like theirs to appoint presbyter-bishops and deacons.
This provision for the future ,vas made, Clement asserts,
t Clement, cc. 42 and 44.

214 IIISTORICAL 'VORTII OF NE'''' TESTAl\lENT
while the apostles '\vere alive, but doubtless in vie,v
of their death. And I think this assertion exactly cor-
responds with the situation of the Pastoral Epistles.
Timothy and Titus 'vere such distinguished men, clothed
with an authority like that of the apostles, and especially
to appoint presbyters.
8. The personal relations of St. Paul to Timothy and
Titus and other persons, but especially to Timothy, dis-
c]osed in the Epistles, and the accurate delineations of
character involved, constitute an unmistakable evidence
of authenticity. The Second Epistle to Timothy is from
this point of view especially marked as authentic, but
there are similar marks in the other Epistles, and they are
all unmistakably bound together by unity of style and
subject.
4. The special features of these Epistles are such as
belong to their purpose or circumstances. For instance,
the moment is just such as would bring to the fore the
conservative and disciplinary side of St. Paul's mind. No
one can read the First Epistle to the Corinthians without
seeing that this side of his character ,vas ahvays there
and often in evidence.
5. The only real difficulty is in the phraseology. That
is in certain respects markedly different from the other
Epistles of St. Paul. I should be disposed to find the
best explanation of this in the supposition that St. Paul
used for these Epistles an amanuensis, to ,vhom (perhaps
because he did not ,vrite shorthand) he left much dis-
cretion in wording the sentences-content that they should
express the idea whieh he had no doubt carefully made
plain: on this, I would refer to Jones, Ope cit., pp. 280-91.

CIIAPTER IX

THE PREJUDICE OF CRITICISM

OUR survey of the Gospels of St. l\Iark and St. Luke-
for we left the First and Fourth Gospels aside for the
llloment-has disposed us to believe them. We
found that the \vriters must have had the freest access
to original ,vitnesses of the events which they describe.
Their intentions were conspicuously sin1ple and honest.
They appear to have no design except to record things
as they happened. It is true that in their narratives
we are presented '\vith a person and with events quite
unparalleled in the history of the world. But we
have fOllild ourselves, as ,ve have read and re-read
these records, quite unable to believe that 've have
here a work of inlagination. The portrait is con-
vincing. The elen1ents in the narrative--the things
done and the things said-cohere in a wonderful
unity. l\tloreover, when we read the Epistles, ,vhile
,ve \vere struck ,vith the vivid picture which they give
us of the life and interests of the earliest Christian
Churches, we made this note; that these interests
and controversies of the apostolic Churches, though
St. Mark and St. Luke must have been intin1ately
acquainted ,vith them, do not appear to have dis-
coloured the narratives of the first experiences of the
apostles while our Lord ,vas still on earth. Neither
in the phraseology nor in the substance of the books
215

216 THE PREJUDICE OF CRITICISM
cOlÙd ,ve discover any appreciable trace of these later
interests. Thus ,ve find ourselves disposed to take
the Gospels for 'v hat they profess to be, and to give
them an open-minded hearing.
But we find that this is exactly what the intellect
of Europe for the last seventy years has, as a ,vholc-
so far as it has paid attention to the origins of
Christianity-been steadily refusing to do. It has
been occupied in substantially rewriting the Gospels.
It has been producing an " historical Jesus," markedly
unlike the original in the Gospels, or rather several
discordant pictures all unlike the original in many
most important respects. Now, ""hen ,,"e set ourselves
to examine the cause of this undoubted fact, I think
we shall find it to be that the intellect of Europe has
been in rebellion against the miraculous and generally
the supernatural, of ,vhich the Gospels are confessedly
full. This presupposition, "rhich is
trictly philoso-
phical rather than historical-that miraculous and
supernatural events cannot really have occurred-has
made necessary that radical reconstruction of "the
Jesus of history," ,vhich presents IIinl in a forin so un-
like that whieh the Gospels present in so many ,vays.
The grounds of this rebellion against the Gospels
as they stand is very vividly presented in Renan's
Souven'Ìrs d' enfance et de jcul1 esse, in ,yhich he discloses
to us the intellectual nlotives 'v hich led to his
repudiation of thp principles of his education in Catho-
lic seminaries, and account for the version of thC'
history of Christ ,vhich he gave the ,vorld in his
Vie de J
sus. He speaks contemptuously of historical
criticism as a science. It can claÌlll no real authority.
It can never really reconstruct the past. "The
regret of my life is to have chosen for lny studies a
class of researches ,vhich can never beconle authori-

RENAN 217
tative [qui ne s'imposera jamais], and which will
remain ahvays in the stage of interesting considera-
tions about a reality which has for ever vanished." 1
What really came to control his imagination and his
mind was the majestic certitude of the physicaJ
sciences. The spirit of the physical sciences repu-
diates the miraculous, and can find no such evidence
of miracles having ever occurred as its canons of proof
would require; and with the miraculous it repudiates
the 'v hol e category of the supernatural. " The
affirmation that everything in the world is of the same
colour, that there is no particular supernatural nor
special revelation [révélation momentanée) presented
itself as authoritative in an absolute Inanner over our
spirit. The clear scientific view of a universe, 'v here
no free ,vill superior to that of man is at ,york in any
appreciable manner, became since the beginning of
1846 the immovable anchor '\vhence ,ve have never
departed." I "People who are in accord with
positive science do not admit the special supernatural,
the miracle," though they are capable of idealism. 3
So far the brilliant Frenchman. The prejudice ","ith
which he reapproached the Gospel story is made
quite plain. But the Frenchman had already got his
inspiration fron1 Gern1any..
Of Gernlan Biblical criticism in its application to
the Ne,v Testament, and especially to the Gospels,
,ve have recently had a brilliant survey by Albert
Sclnveitzer in a book '\vhich he called Von Reimarus
zu JV rerle, · which means the history of the criticism of
the Gospels since Lessing published (in 1774-9) the
famous JV olfenbüttel fragments (the fragments of his

1 Souvcnirs, p. 263. 8 Vie de Jésus, Pref.
2 pp. 337-8, 282. . Souvenirs, p. 291.
It In the English trans. J The Quest of the H istoricaZ J e8US.

218 TI-IE PREJITDICE OF CRITICIS
I
friend ReÏ1narus, issued by him after Reimarus's
death from 'Volfenbüttel in Brwls,vick, ,vhere he "
as
librarian), dc>\vn to "'"Frede's publication of The .Jlessi-
anic Secret in the Gospels in 1901. It is a brilliantly
written history of a process ,vhich, as far as the study
of documents is concerned, can be said to tend to,vards
agreement in results, but as far as concerns the
picture presented of the" Jesus of history," sho\vs an
astonishing divergence, ,vhich remains unreconciled.
There is the "J esus of Liberal Theology," who
preaches the Fatherhood of God and the Brotherhood
of man-all that is most attractive to the modern
humanitarian spirit. This is the theology repre-
sented in IIarnack's fatnous lectures, What is Chris-
tianity? and it is familiar enough in this country;
and there is the less familiar " Jesus" of the apocalyp-
tic school, represented by Sch,veitzer hirnself, ,vho is
an apocalyptic prophet or visionary enthusiast, of
a fanatical type, deluded by the conviction of the
Ï1nmediate arrival of the world catastrophe and the
!\:Îngùom of God, in ,vhich he himself is to be the
predestined l\Iessiah or Son of l\Ian. The differences
bct,veen these t,vo presentations of the "historical
Jesus" is sufficiently startling. It is not no,v the
time to d,vell on them. But any student of Seh,veit-
zer's pages can perceive that ,vhat enables critics to
form such strangely different estin1ates of an historical
figure is that both schools are agreed in repudiating
such large elements in the records as they stand-not
on grounds of criticism, but on grounds of a priori
assun1ption-that the question of what is to be
allowed to remain becomes largely a question to be
decided by arbitrary choice. The fundamental
assumption of all the critics ,vhom Sch,veitzer takes
seriously is the assumption that the miraculous did

STRAUSS

219

not occur, and that the theological beliefs associated
,,
ith the acceptance of miracles have vanished with
them. Jesus, as ReÎ1narus said, must have remained
" within the limits of humanity." That He did certain
cures which seemed to the people miraculous is not to
be denied, and is quite explicable. But other miracles,
such as must really involve a supernatural power,
have no basis in fact.! ReÎ1narus's thorough-going
denials were not immediately acceptable. But they
,vere revived by David Strauss, the first edition of
whose Life of Jesus appeared to shock Europe in 1835.
From him Schweitzer dates the final abandonment of
the 111iraculous by German theology. Many things
remain quite unsettled. "What has been gained is
only that the exclusion of miracle from our view of
history has been universally recognized as a principle
of criticisln, so that miracle no longer concerns the
theologians either positively or negatively." I
According to Sclnyeitzer, there have been three
great alternatiyes concerning Christ presented to
criticism, of "\\?hich the first was finally decided by
Strauss, "either purely historical or purely super-
natural." 3 The historical and the supernatural are to
be regarded, ,ve observe, as incompatible alternatives.
So it still appears to IIarnack. If, as ,ve have said,
he no,v dates the documents very early, he is only the
more sure that myths, such as the ascension of Jesus
or His birth of a virgin, can form themselves very
quickly..

1 Schweitzer, pp. 17 fi. I p. Ill.
a The second alternative was "either Synoptic or J ohannine."
This was decided by Tübingen and Boltzmann. The third, clearly
propounded afresh by J oha.nn Weiss, is " either eschatological or non-
eschatologica.l." This remains still undecided.
, See Harnack, Acts oj the Apostles, pp. 158 f.; The Date oj the
Synoptic Gospels, p. 161.

220 THE PREJUDICE OF CRITICIS
I
No,v, Schweitzer makes galne of the "Liberal"
Jesus and of that of Henan the Frenchnlan. " This
professedly historical Jesus is not a purely historical
figure, but one which has been artificially transplanted
into history. . . . What is admitted as Instorical is
just \vhat the spirit of our time can take out of the
records in order to assimilate it to itself." Rut ,ve
seem to see the same arbitrariness in the apocalyptic
Jesus of Sch\veitzcr. All these schools of critics start
\vith an invincible, dominant prejudice. It may not
indeed be so boldly expressed as \vith Strauss, ,vhose
(almost) sole consideration is declared to be that " in
the person and acts of Jesus no supernaturalism shall
be suffered to remain." 1 "He ,vho ,vould banish
priests from the Church, must first banish miracles
from re1igion." "Christianity is so living a po,ver,
and the problem as to its origin so rife in important
consequences to the immediate present, that the
student must be literally stupid ,vhose interest in the
determination of such a question can be strictly
confined to the historical." The bias here is plain
indeed! But though the bias is not so gross and
palpable in other leaders of criticisn1 as in Strauss, yet
they have all of them in their minds a dominant pre-
supposition, derived not really from historical science
properly so-caUed, but from a certain philosophy
of the universe, which ,ve shall have to examine
carefully-the presupposition that miracles are in-
credible, and are the expression of a supernaturalism
which they reject. \Vhat this ÍInpossiblc supernatur-
1 New Life oj Jesus, i, p. xii. "This negation is for our object,
which is prospective, and not merely retrospf'ctive and historical,
a principal, if not the sole considera.tion. It consist.s in this: that
in the person and acts of Jesus no supernaturalism shall be suffered to
remain; nothing that can press upon the souls of men with t,he
leadon weight of arbitrary, inscrutable authority." Cf. p. x.

ENGLISH SCIIOLARS 221
alism exactly is, differs from critic to critic no doubt.
Thus the lin1its of ,vhat can be rationally believed
differ in different cases, but, as ,viiI be indicated
directly, not only miracles, but the real incarnation
of the Divine Son in hUlnan nature fa]]s apparently
for all these schools of critics outside the lirnits of the
rationally credible. l
This spirit of continental criticism-,vhich for ,vant
of a better nan1e ,ve can rationalistic-is, I believe,
logical in thus recognizing that what it is rejecting is
not merely miraculous facts, but the ,vhole conception
of a supernatural incoming of God into human life
,vhich had sought to extrude Hin1, and into nature
,v here men had sought to forget Him. And this
spirit of continental criticisln has had not a few
representatives in England. It found expression in
that strange anonymous book Supernatural Religion,
,vhich forty-six years ago began its meteoric and
short-lived career, hailed triumphantly as the very ex-
pression of the best mind of the age, but passing rapidly
under a cloud, o,ving chiefly to the critical exposure
to ,vhich it ,vas subjected at the hands of Lightfoot.
'fo-day, a much better scholar and more competent
thinker, Dr. J{irsopp Lake, is giving it po,verfu1
expression, in a much less malevolent but in a not
much less trenchant form than was given it by
Strauss.
But in England-perhaps only in England or the
British Isles-,ve also find a group of scholars ,vho
are prepared to declare, or ,vho strongly suspect, that

1 As to miracles, the healings of the sick are admitted to have
occurred in some sense, i.e. the recorded healings are not more than
exaggerations of what actually occurred. But what are excluded a.re
the " nature miracles "---e.g. the raisings of the dead, or the feeding
of. the five thousand, or the walking on the water, or the birth of the
-Vjrgin. or
e
rporal resurrection of Christ.

222 THE PREJUDICE OF CRITICIS1\1
miracles are, if not strictly impossible, yet in fact
incredible, but who at the same time themselves hold
the full supernatural faith in the incarnation of God
the Son in the person of Jesus Christ, and who even
profess some indignation that the orthodox faith of
those who cannot accept the miraculous should be
impugned. Of this group Dr. Sanday ,vas the most
conspicuous example. As is well kno,vn, that eminent
scholar in the last years of his life, if he did not
certainly deny the real occurrence of miracles, did
at least seriously doubt it. But he ,vas strenuous
in maintaining that such doubt or positive rejection
was quite compatible with Christian orthodoxy. He
was indignant that anyone should question the right of
those who repudiate miracles still to recite in good faith
the Catholic creeds, because the essence of those creeds
lies not in certain specific miraculous facts, but in a
certain specific and supernatural faith. \Ve are not at
the moment concerned to discuss questions connected
with the person of Christ. \Ve are only concerned to
get clearly into our n1inds Dr. Sanday's opinion. He
,vrote 1 : "The central truth which it is 1110st
important to guarantee is the true Godhead of Father,
Son, and Holy Ghost; that our Lord Jesus Christ is
truly God and truly Lord, very God and at the same
time very man. I imagine that, if we were to cross-
question ourselves as to what we mean when we recite
the Creeds, it would be something like that in its
simplest form. . . . We should all agree that anything
really less than this ,vould be hypocritical. The man
who, in his heart of hearts, really believed less ought
not to stay ,vherc he is " (i.e. a minister of the Church

1 Bishop Gore's Challenge to Criticism (Longmans, 1914), p. 9.
Some later words of Dr. Sanday lead me to doubt if he held to th

position so clearly defined above.

SA
DA.Y AND LOOFS 223
of England). I read these words when they were first
published with not a little astonishment-as for other
reasons with which we are now not concerned, so
because they imply so naïve a confidence that
lniracles can be discarded and the old conviction of
faith about the person of Christ retained in all its sim-
plicity. I was the more surprised because in the same
pamphlet 1 Dr. Sanday speaks in highly complimentary
terms of Dr. Loofs " as one of the best and most
cautious of the Germans," and refers us to his little
book What is the T'tuth about Jesus Christ? For what
is the point of this book? It is to declare that the
ancient orthodox doctrine of the Trinity and the
Incarnation is out of the question for the modern
critical scholar. Dr. Loofs holds what in technical
terminology would be called an Adoptionist doctrine
of Christ and a Sabellian view of God-that is, he
holds that Christ was a man possessed in some
undefinable and unique manner with the Divine
Spirit so as to make Him the revealer of God and the
beginning of a new manhood. But that" the historical
Jesus is the pre-existent Son of God" he not only
repudiates, but declares that all learned theologians
repudiate and must repudiate. "Those ,vho are
impartial enough," he "Tites, to see certain points
of his argulnent, "are thereby convinced that the
orthodox Christology cannot give us the correct
interpretation of the historical person of Jesus. And
there is hard1 y a single learned theologian- I know of
none in Germany-who defends the orthodox Christ-
ology in its unaltered form."
But we need not go to Germany in order to convince
ourselves that the repudiation of miracles is based on
a state of mind which ,viII have much wider effect
1 p. 29.
English trans. (Scribners), 1913.

224 THE PREJUDICE OF CRITICISl\I
than the repudiation of certain supposed events.
IIo,v indeed should it be othcr\visc? For the repudia-
tion of rniracles cuts very deep into the Gospel
narratives. Thus Dr. Sanday thinks that the miracles
of feeding had a basis in fact. Our Lord did really
organize and preside at a quasi-sacralnental lllea1.
SOllIe slnall portion of food, such as ,vas available, ,vas
distributed so that, as at a sacranlental table, all
should feel they had been sharing together. The
narrative, he says, is all true except that they were
not " filled." I t ,vas not a case of a satisfying meal.
After,vards the tendency among the disciples to fashion
miracles for their lllaster on the analogy of the Old
Testanlent n1Ìraclcs brought it about that the reputed
nuracle of Elisha, \vhen he fed the hundred men with
the twenty loaves of barley and the frcsh ears of corn, 1
\vas reproduced on a much larger scale and attached
to our Lord, on the ba
is of ,vhat has really been not a
satisfying of their appetites \vith food but a picce of
sacramental symbolisln. But this manipulation of
the narrative cuts very deep. Not only the ,vord
" filled," and (it should be addcd) the collection of the
fragments after the meal, nlust vanish, but the whole
lllotivc and setting of the story is altered. For in the
story there is not the suggestion of anything else,
except that Jesus was determined to "satisfy" a
crowd with food, when His resources were manifestly
much too small. It is only His compassion for men's
physical needs that is in vie\v (l\Iark vi. 24), and then
the miraculous po,ver that was in His pity. There

1 2 Kings iv. 42. This interpretation of our Lord's miracle as an
imaginative exaggoration of Elisha's is due first to Reimarus. It is
curious that the miracle of Elisha as recorded in the book of I\::ings
appears to be hardly miraculous. Twenty loaves and an undefined
quantity of ears of corn could really supply something worthy to be
called a meal to a hundred men.

RECONSTRUCTION OF GOSPELS 225
is also no suggestion of any incident in the Old
Testament as a modifying force. If ,vhat really
happened ,vas only the sacramental distribution of
n1Ïnute fragulents, then plainly our narrative in .l\'Iark,
although the context indicates that Peter must have
been present, is not Peter's story, nor the story of
any eye-,vitness, but only a reflection several degrees
relnoved, upon ,vhich so much imagination has been
expended that its original character is quite obliter-
ated. An eye-witness might be wrong in the
figures. The seven loaves might become five or the
four thousand persons five thousand. But the ,vhole
character of the incident could not be altered in his
memory.
1
0 take another instance from the critical recon-
struction of the Gospel story-if the tOlnb of Jesus
,vas not really found empty on the morning of the
Sunday after the crucifixion, the story in the Gospel
of l\lark must be far removed from the original experi-
ence. Once more, if the "" naturalists'" prejudice is
to prevail, the núracles of healing must in most cases
have been at least greatly exaggerated before they
reached their Gospel forin. Noone could give a
naturalistic interpretation of twelve lepers (in popular
estimation) all simultaneously suddenly healed, 1 or
even of one. How then, if the story has been so
fundamentally transformed, can it be plausibly
pleaded that the words of Jesus Christ (on which the
theological creed is built) have escaped similar distor-
tion and exaggeration"/ Do men exaggerate the
actions, or do they in fact become exaggerated, more
than the ,vords of great leaders and heroes?
I t will not, then, surprise us to discover that English
critics, like those of France and Gerrnany, plainly
1 See Luke ;xvii. 14 and v. 12; cf. Mark i. 40.

16

226 TI-IE P!tEJUDICE OF CRITICISl\I
regard the record of the teaching of our Lord as open
to as llluch suspicion and requiring as n1uch revision,
before it can be accepted as historical, as the record of
the 111iracles. Thus ,ve are assured by Dr. Glover that
Jesus did not call HÏInself the Son of God,l though
there is no fact better certified in our foundation
documents than that lIe did; and by Dr. Rashdall
that lIe probably did not proclairn IIin1seif the final
judge of alllnen J . and that lIe never spoke of IIis ùeath
as to have an atoning or ransoming value for the souls
of n1en I-again in spite of the fundan1ental records;
and by Dr. Inge and others that lIe founded no Church
and instituted no sacran1ents.. Dr. Kirsopp Lake
'v ill not allow it to be probable that lIe even called
IIin1seif the Christ (in the specific sense) or the Son
of l\lan, or ,vas so called during His lifetime,. though
here, I think, most of the other critics WhOlll I have
named ,vould dissent fron1 hin1. But Dr. Glover,
again, assures us that St. Paul ,vas the first to call
IIim "the Lord." I l\Iore tha.n this, though lIe is
represented so plainly as speaking ,vith infallible
authority, ,ve are constantly ,yarned that He ,vas
plainly under a delusion about the inln1ediatc coming
of the kingdom, and shared the popular superstition
about devils and their possession of n1en 7; and others

1 Oonflict of Religions, p. 138: "terms which Jesus did not use."
2 Oonscience and Christ, p. 48.
8 Idea of Aton
ment, pp. 27 fl.
4 Outspoken Essays, pp. 227, 249, and elsewhere.
& Landmarks, pp. 48-52.
e Conflict, p. 156.
"/ All these points enumerated above will come up for discussion
in due course in the next volume. It is worth noting that tho
popular rejection of the belief in the dovil, as amere superstition, is
not so modern as people suppose. Fielding's landlady in Tom
Jones cries, " But as the parson told us lust Sunday, nobody believes
in the devil nowadays."

AFFECTS IDEAS AS 1\IUCII AS FACTS 227
of the left ,ving ,yarn us that ,ve cannot rely upon His
sinlessness in any strict sense.
No\v, the noticeable thing about these n1ultiplied
denials is that thcy are based on no critical grounds-
that is, thcy all contradict our foundation documents
--St.l\Iark and Q. Thus in these docun1cnts our Lord
again and again calls I-liInsclf Son of God, and is so
called, in a sense clearly not applicable to other men. l
In the Serl1l0n on the l\Iount! and in several-surely
indisputable- parables IIis position as final judge, even
of n1en's secret motives, is clearly implied. In t,vo
passages of St. l\Iark the atoning or ransoming value of
His death is apparent, and IIis identification of Him-
self ,vith the suftering servant of Isaiah is elsewhere
evident. s That He founded a Church and instituted
sacraments intended to be permanent is not only
asserted or implied in the Gospels, but is necessary
to explain the action of the Church as recorded in
the opening of the Acts, and presupposed in the
Epistles; and so far as concerns the Eucharist, it is
declarcd by St. Paul as part of the tradition ,vhich he
delivered.' So, again, Jesus is called Lord in the
Acts I in the supreme sense some time before St.
Paul was converted; and the title must have been
so familiar to the Aramaic-speaking Church of J uda.ea
that it passed into St. Paul's Greek Churches in its
Aramaic form,
laranatha, "Come, 0 Lord!'! But
over this ground we shall have to go again when we
face the question, \Vhat think ye- of Christ? All that

1 See Mark xiii. 32 and xii. 6, xiv. 61-2; Matt. xi. .27 = Luke x. 22.
If these words can be eliminated, anything can.
2 :J\tlatt. vii. 22-3.
8 This will be argued later.
" 1 Cor. xi. 24-5.
I Acts ii. 36; cf. x. 36,

228 THE PREJUDICE OF CRITICISl\1
I ,vallt no\v to indicate, and \vhal I have, I think,
made evident, is (1) that neither in the case of our
scholars nor in that of the Gerrnans is it anything
that can be legitirnately called criticism of the
docunlent
,vhich is at the root of the denials which
I have been enunlerating: it is a certain intellectual
presupposition about the miraculous and generally
the supernatural; and (2) that Dr. Sanday's assump-
tion, that the 11lÌracwous could be dropped out of the
record ,vithout affecting the traditional belief in the
teaching and person of Jesus, is not only wholly
illlprobable in itself, but also contradicted by our
experience at honle as well as anlong continental
scholars.
'Ve must take it for granted, then, that the elimina-
tion of the miraculous cuts so deep into our docunlents
as to render the \vhole foundation of fact insecure.
The interval bet\\?een the facts as they are assunled to
have occurred \vithout llliracle and our earliest records,
so full of miracle and the aSSulllption of miracle,
becomes so great that the historical Figure as He must
have been becomes dim. Ho\v He is to be represented
seems to depend on the arbitrary judgement of the
particular critic, who may be of the Liberal Humani-
tarian school or of the Apocalyptic school or of some
other. But, though SOllIe of the critics \vho repudiate
the miraculous are lnore conservative than others,
I cannot nlyself doubt that there is anlong such critics
an inevitable trend to\vards a purely hunlanitarian
estÌmate of the personality of Christ, that is, a
repudiation of the conception of Jesus Christ, as
the eternal Son of God for us men and for our
sal vation made flesh, ,vhich has possessed Christen-
dOlll. It is quite plain, then, that what has to
be freely and deeply scrutinized is the intellectual

THE ENQUIRY INTO PRESUPPOSITIONS 229
ground for the repudiation of the miraculous and the
supernatural a priori. If this should turn out to
be invalid, then, and only then, shall we have a
chance of being able to apply rea] or free historical
criticism to the Gospels.!

1 I wish to recall to mind some remarkable words of Bp. Creighton
in a letter to l\-Irs. J. R. Green: see his Life, p. 330-1: "Historical
criticism is not a science: it is only an investigation of the value of
evidence. It rests on presuppositions which are derived from
e:xperiencê. I am disposed to believe what is analogous to my
experience: my criticisln is awakened by what is not analogous.
The destructive criticism of the N. T. rests on the presupposition that
miracles do not happen. As the writers of the N. T. record miracles,
it is necessary to explain how these records came into being.
A number of ingenious and plausible theories about their nature and
authorship and gradual growth have consequently been formed.
Their number and persistency seem to add to their force. You
say, , 'Yhy are they not refuted?' The only possible refutation of
them is to show that, apart from the presuppositions on which they
rest, their conclusions are not capable of positive proof. . .. The
miracles connected with the person of Jesus are analogous to the
spiritual experience of the believing Christian. Therefore he is not
moved by the presupposition that they are contrary to nature.
The real question in dispute is the conception of nature. Biblical
criticism will not solve that question."

LIBR

Y ST. MAR' 'S COLLEGE

CHAPTER X

THE PREJUDICE EXA),UNED

THE Synoptic Gospels, on grounds of external and
internal evidence, claim acceptance as trust,vorthy
historical documents. But the picture they present
of the Christ is that of a " supernatural" person, and
they are full of miraculous incidents. Any exclusion
of the supernatural and miraculous from the narra..
tives cuts so deep into their substance as to leave the
residue incoherent, and the person described so dÏIn and
un
ertain that the most diverse representations of
Him have been given. Take the Gospels as they stand,
on the other hand, and the picture has been felt over
long ages to be in a high degree coherent and impres..
sive. Nothing, it would seem, can justify the
elimination of the elements objected to, except an
a priori conviction that nliracles either absolutely
cannot have happened or at least are in fact incre-
dible. The actual evidence, however, ,ve shall have to
consider very carefully. But undoubtedly the mind
of the critical ,vorld for t\VO generations has been that
miracles, ho,vever apparently ,veIl certified, cannot in
fact have happened, or at least that even very good
evidence cannot persuade us to believe that they
have happened. And inasmuch as historical evidence
never can be really cOlnpulsory, there is an unreality
about a good deal of the recent discussion of it. \Ve
230

TIlE 1\lEANING OF l\IlRACLE 231
must go back upon the presupposition. Is this
presupposition that" nature" is a system closed and
cOlnplete in itself, so that the idea of an " intrusion"
into it of anything" from beyond," or the idea of any
" interruption" of its regular la,v or order, is unthink-
able-is this presupposition rational and tenable?
To justify this ,yay of putting the question, we
n1ust seek to define with sufficient exactness what is
meant by the supernatural and the miraculous. Let
it be granted, then, that there is a cosmos, or world
of order and law, ,vith ,vhich experience fan1iliarizes
men, and ,vhich science investigates ,vith ever-
increasing confidence that nothing ,viII be found
there disconnected or arbitrary. Let it be granted
al
o that (say) the physical resurrection of Christ
from the dead, or lIis feeding of the five thousand
,vith the five barley loa ves and the t\VO fishes (or
further the personality of Christ as a ,vhole) docs
present itself in this cosmos as something ,vhich it
cannot account for-postulating some power at ,york
of ,vhich it kno,vs nothing. Let it be granted, finally,
that these events are supposed to occur for this very
reason-because instinctively and inevitably men
cannot attribute thenl to "nature," but will be
driven to see in them signs that the power behind
nature, the power of God the Creator, is through
them giving signs to nlen of a special purpose to
,vhich their attention is thereby effectively called.
Then ,ve seem to have got a .sort of definition of a
miracle. It is an occurrence in the process of nature
of something ,vhich nature, that is, the experienced
order, cannot account for, and which constrains men
to recognize a special or extraordinary action of God
calling attention to a special purpose. And the
supernatural is all that constrains men to believe

232 THE PREJUDICE EXA
IINED
that nature ,vith its customary order is not closed or
complete in itself, but part of a larger and higher
,vorld of existence from ,vhich it is not separated by
any unsurmountable barrier.
That will suffice for the moment. Obviously the
word supernatural is a \vord which raises scruples in
the mind of the believer in God. It suggests a nature
which goes of its
lf and seems to relegate God to
a sphere beyond, from which He "intervenes" in
nature, as if He ,,,,ere not there all along, the doer of
an that is done. The believer in God would feel,
quite truly, that the enlightened imagination always
sees the visible order on the background of the
invisible-sees God in all things and all things in
God. The word "nature," he ,vould say, should
suggest the \vhole 1; and should not ascribe a sort
of completeness to ,vhat is only a dependent portion.
This must be granted. Nevertheless, the visible
,yorld and its order and la,v has so impressed itself
on the imagination of men, and moulded their
language as a thing in itself, that ,ve need the ,vord
nature to describe it, and the ,vord supernatural to
suggest '\vhatever may lie in the unkno,Vll beyond.
In the same ,yay the idea of miracle may be objected
to as suggesting that God is there most evident when
something happens which is disconnected and dis-
orderly. This impression ,ve shall seek to remove.
But to start with, I think we may accept the account
of the miraculous and the supernatural given above
as, even if roughly, giving the right impression and
raising the right question-Is "nature" such a
system, so self-complete and closed, whether demon-

1 Cf. ft, famous passage in Bp. Butler's Analogy, Part I, cap. i:
" Persons' notions of what is natural will be enlarged in proportion
to their greater knowledge," etc.

IS NATURE A CLOSED SYSTEl\I? 233
strably so or so found in experience, as that ,ve
may pronounce incredible events in nature ,vhich its
observed order cannot account for, and '\vhich can
only be interpreted as special acts of God forcibly
calling attention to a special purpose? Is there
such a closed system? Is it the postulate of science?
Or is it the impression so strongly conveyed by
experience that ,ve cannot get beyond it ?

I
The conception of nature as a closed system appears
first, I believe, formulated "ith sufficient distinctness
by the Stoics.
"Everything that happens is follo'wed by something
else, 'which is necessarily linked to it as to its cause, and
is preceded by sOlnething to which it is linked as its cause.
For nothing in the ,yorld exists or happens ,vithout a
cause, since there is nothing in it which is detached and
separated from the whole sun1 of preceding events. For
if any uncaused movement ,vere introduced, the world
,,"ould be pulled asunder and òissevered, and would no
longer remain for ever one, ruJed according to a single
order and arrangement." 1
But the idea ,vas reintroduced into the modern
,,"orld by Spinoza. His God-the object of his
intense intellectual passion-was simply great nature
,vith its invariable laws, existing under the double
mode of n1ind and extension or matter. This a,vful,
impersonal being is the only substance which the
intel]ect in man can legitimately recognize and
legitin1ately worship. And the sway of its la,v is
absolute. It excludes all possibility of any such
1 This is from Alexander of Aphrodisias (c. A.D. 200), called" the
exegete of Aristotle," but giving the Stoic idea of nature; cf. Ueber-
weg's History of Philosophy, i. IS!, and \Yendland, .Jliracles and
Christianity (Hodder & Stoughton), p. 252.

234 TIlE PREJUDICE EX
\l\IINED
freedon1 of ,vills as ,vould admit of the occurrence of
anything contingent-anything ,vhich full kno,vledge
could not have certainly predicted-in the univers
.
Freedom in this sense belongs neither to n1an nor to
God. And there is nothing knowable beyond nature
or above its la,vs. 1
It is this kind of conception of a self-complete and
closed system of nature \vhich appears as lying
behind the denials of the miraculous in Strauss and
Renan and in the German rationalists. And the
question is-is it valid? It is no doubt the postu-
late of the physicist and the chen1ist. But is it
sin1ply a working postulate, \vhich is found true and
necessary in a group of sciences \vhich take certain
aspects or parts of nature in abstraction from the
\vhole, but ,,
hich cannot be taken as valid for the
,vhole of experienced reality?
Ll:t us test it by its applicability to the freedon1
of the "ill-the moral freedom of man-,vhieh,
\ve contend, is a fact in experienced" nature." I
think ,ve shall find that the question of the reality
of moral freedom, ,vhich has been already discussed,
and the question of the credibility of miracles are at
bottom one and the san1e question.
The idea of moral freedom is not in itself antagon-
istic to the idea of perfect la,v. A \vorld of free
beings can be conceived whose ,villing obedience to
divine la\v \vould have resulted in a free \vorld as
completely dominated by or expressive of IR\Y as
inanimate or irrational nature could be. So Dante
magnificently conceives Paradise. There "God's
\vill is our peace," and the slightest desire of departure

1 There are no doubt expressions in Spinoza.'s writings which
suggest a more personal conception of God. But the above repre-
sents, I think, his final mind as he quite clearly expresses it. .

IT CONTAINS FREE 'VILLS 235
from His ,viII has become inconceivable. La,v, as a
burden, is transcended, but it is not abolished in a
,,,orld ,vhere perfectly free love expresses itself as
perfect order. But freedom of choice, though it
need not involve any actual departure from order,
involves the possibility of it, and has, in fact, resulted
in ,yorld-,vide la,vlessness. Here, I say, ,ve get to
the crux of the ,vhole question. No doubt the free
,viII of men has been absurdly exaggerated. As a
fact, it is strictly linlÌted. There is no such thing
as human independence. All the forces "\vhich any
man employs, in choosing or carrying out his choice,
are dra,vn from beyond himself. It need not be
claimed that he can add to the SUln of energy. His
conditions again determine the channels along ,vhich
he must use the po,vers ,vhich are available. Never-
theless, in the heart of this ,vorld of determinate and
determined forces and la"\vs there lies this mysterious
and unique thing-free choice. As has been already
argued, the choice of the will at the last analysis
decides in ,vhich direction-in the fornl of ,vhich kind
of action-the energy stored in the hunlan organism
is liberated. Something has happened ,vhich
nlechanism cannot explain. Nothing can explain it
except the frank recognition of nloral ,viII as here
directive of physical force.
IV[oreover, here, in the region of nloral choice, we
are conscious of what Kant has called the categorical
imperative of duty. This again has been argued
already. The soul of man is conscious of a moral
purpose above him claiming to control his action.
Thc purpose of nature, or the God of nature, appears
to be that he should be " good," as he can be only
by the free choice of his ,vine We are thus bound to
think of the great po,ver, ,vithin the grasp of ,vhich

236 TIlE PREJUDICE EXAMINED
,vc live and move and are, as not nIcre unconscious
force, but also as conscious nIoral ,,
ill and purposc-
as ,villing righteousness. Here ,ve feel ourselves
planted on ground frOIn ,vhieh our reason cannot
suffer us to be dislodged. Nature has behind it
and ,vithin it a Being of ,vhom the nIoral will in us
and the nIoral personality is a better image than
either mechanical force or unconscious ]ife. Thus
to think of God is not " anthropomorphism" -that
is, the reducing of God into the image of man. It is
more truly described as "theomorphism "-that is,
the recognition that the human personality, ,vhich is
the highest fornl of lifp kno,vn in nature, is a better
"image of God" than physical forces or chenlical
eonlbinations. Call God, if you ,viII, superpersonal,
but at any rate you must think of Hinl as not
inferior to man-as at least rationally ,villing and
choosing in accordance \vith a purpose of righteous-
ness in the ,vbolc universe of things. This tentative
conclusion, to ,vhich our reason pointed us, receives
the strongest possible confirmation in the self-
disclosure of God given through the prophets and
Christ, which ,ve have decided to accept as real.
No,v, then, ,ve have a conception of God ,vhich is
in no ,yay antagonistic to the '" universal reign of
law" in nature, but which gives it a new meaning.
The very bcing of God is la,v and order. Nothing
arbitrary or disorderly or disconnected in action can
be conceived in connexion ,vith Him. The" uni-
forn1Ïty of nature" is the exhibition of His
perfect orderliness. 1 But the principle of the order

1 It is only as the exhibition of God's win that the word "law"
was first applied to nature: "Thou hast given it a law which shall not
be broken"; and it is only in this sense that the use of the word
is really legitimate. It always suggests something more than mere
regularity. It suggests some authority behind the regularity.

THE FREEDOl\1 OF GOD

237

of nature is no,v seen to be not blind nlechanism, but
the perfect reason and perfectly free "Till of the
supreme God the Creator.
This sort of conception of God no doubt received its
most forceful expression ,vithin the race of Israel.
The Jehovah of the Old Testament is, as ,ve have
seen, presented as lllost intensely personal, holy and
free, the Creator and Governor of all that is. He is
represented as having made man his vicegerent in
the governillent of the ,vorld. l\Ian is to "have
dOlllinion " over all the 10"Ter orders of creation. But
on the vastest scale he has ll1isused this ste,vardship,
and his 111isuse of it has disordered not only his own
nature and life, but the 'v hole superficial order of the
,vorld. It has raised huge structures of insolence
and cruelty and lust. And the blindness and ,vilful-
ness of sin have obliterated or 1110nstrously perverted
man's thought of God on the vastest scale. This is
the burden of the Old Testament. And God has not
seen fit to annihilate either man or his freedom. He
tolerates the vast disorder. But He counter\vorks it.
He enters into the struggle. He sets redemptive
forces to ,york. He choo
es Hi
human instruments
in the race of Israel, ,vhich are, if they ,viII consent,
to fulfil IIis special purpose. He bears ,vith their
obstinacy and ,vilfulncss and ignorance. He perse.
veres. Through infinite difficulties and seeming
failures He brings His redenlptive purpose to its
climax or critical moment. It is the COlllillg of the
Christ. And it is in this critical moment that God is
specially-not then only, but then specially-repre-
sented as "baring His arnl " in miraculous-that is,
abnormal-action. And the point is: Is not the
credibility of such action, at such a crisis, bound up
with the belief in a God ,vho is personal, rational, and

288 TIlE PREJUDICE EXAl\IINED
free-in the ,vorld, but also beyond it and over it ?
The point of a divine miracle, as the Dible conceives
it, is not to be a mere portent, but a sure indication to
men's minds that the rnoral ,viII of God is supreme in
the ,vorld. It is just this sense that the ,vide and age-
long prevalence of sin has dissolved. The very order
of nature ,vith its apparent moral indifference-God
" lnaking IIis sun to shine on the evil and on the good
[indiscrÜninately], and sending rain upon the just and
on the unjust "-has helped this rnoral blindness.
The nlind of mankind has utterly misconceived God.
"Thou thoughtest wickedly that I am even such a
one as thyself." 1\1:an's pride has left IIim out of
account, and despised Him. The rejection and
crucifixion of Christ is, of course, the supreme exan1ple
of such moral blindness. The" ,yeakness of God " is
there sho,vn at its supreme point. l Is it not at least
conceivable that at such a suprelne crisis-and indeed
at the like crises-God should have" bared His arm "
and given mankind, or such portion of mankind as
have" eyes to see," assurance-such assurance as is
given by Christ's resurrection fronl the dead-that
at the last issue the power ,vhich rules in the physical
world is on the side of righteousness-that it is the
same God ,vho commands in conscience and speaks
through prophets? It is true that the testing of faith
lies in enduring and seeing Him ,vho is invisible. This
is the normal task of faith. But surely the Father
of spirits lllay see that this testing ordeal must be
tempered. Frequent miracles ,vould destroy the
reality of this probation, as they would destroy the
sense of the divine order. But on the suprelne
occasions, can the human rea5,on have the audacity
1 Cf. Ps. lxxviii. 61: "Ho [God] delivered his strength into
captivitv, a.nd his glory into the adversary's he,nq."

.A.UGUSTINB'S DEFINITION 239
to say they Inay not be necessary? Can it have the
audacity to say that, on practically no evidence such
as ,viII leave to the ,viII of nlan any responsibility for
choice or faitb, ,viH it accept the fact of their occur-
rence? Certainly nlY reason cannot approach this
point. Can I conceive that the reinforccn1ent of the
moral conscience, the sense of thc suprcl11acy of right,
\vhich ,ve identify" ith Christianity, could have oc-
curred ,vithout the resurrection? There is great
reserve in the exhibition of the miraculous in the
Bible, Old Testament and N e,v; there is great limita-
tion in the evidential function assigned to it. To this
attention ,vill be called. The Bible records are no en-
couragement to any childish love of the marvellous.
But is it not to deny reason to God to deny the possi-
bility or credibility of miracle? Is it not the very
mark of rational po,ver, as compared to blind force or
animal instinct (,vhich may be intelligence in a sense,
but is petrified or dead), that, under exceptional cir-
CUIrlstances, it is not tied to the uniformity of custom?
It can act exceptionally under exceptional circum-
stances. \Vhat God is doing from this point of
vie,v ,vhen He ,yorks a miracle is not to violate
the order of the ,vorld in the deeper sense. He
innovates, it is true, upon the norlnal physical
order, but solely in the interest of the deeper moral
order and purpose of the ,vorld. l\liracle is, from this
point of vie,,", God's protest against the monstrous
disorder of sin. It is God the Creator recreating
what man has defaced. At the last God is to come
into His o,vn-that is the day of the Lord. But
He from time to time gives some foretastes of this
final self-vindication, and they are" miracles." This
is in effect Augustine's famous vindication of the
miraculous.

240 THE PREJUDICE EXAl\IINED

" Not unreasonably ,ve say that God does something
contrary to nature ,vhich He does contrary to what ,ve
kllO\V in nature. For this is ,vhat 've call nature-the
custonlary course of nature as kno\vn to liS, against \vhich,
"hen God dues anything, they are called 111arvels or
miracles. But as to that supren1e )a\v of nature, ,vhich
is hidden from our knowledge either because \ve are impious
or because \ye are still deficient in po,ver to understand,
God can no more act contrary to it than He can act
contrary to Hinlself. . . ." 1

And to adlnit the credibility or the actual occur-
rence of nlÍracles in effect lays no fresh burden upon
science. The sciences of physics and chen1Ìstry-
and \ve may include biology-cannot account for all
that is in nê.
ture. They cannot accoWlt for the action
of free ,vills or for the consequent disorder of sin, any
lllore than they can account for n1iracles. But
neither the actions of free ,vilIs, nor the very rarely
occurring miracles, hinder their effective investigation
of nature on the level that lies bclo,v freedom. 'Vhen
a materialist philosophy has attenlpted to ignore
freedom and still to take all human life into its
province-as the old political econOlllY attempted to
deal ,vith industrial life on the basis of a mechanistic
philosophy of hunlan motives-it has always con-
spicuously failed. !\lechanism can give no account of

1 This passage, which has been quoted in all modern treatises on
the subject, beginning with Trench, is from Con. Faust. xxvi. 3,
cf. also: U God, the maker of all natures, does nothing contrary to
nature, for what is natural to anything is what He does, from whom
is all the law and number and order of nature." 'Vhen Lord Haldane
(Reign oj Relativity, p. 414) defines the miraculous as U what violates
the principles of the order to which it belongs," he seems to be postu-
lating in nature a. complete separation of its" orders" 'which does
not really exist. The intellectual demoralization which a too facile
belief in miracles might occasion (see Pratt's Consciousness oj God,
pp. 27, 446) is not a. temptation to which we are very liable to-day.

ANOTHER EXPLANATION 241
miracles. But also it can give no account of freedon1
or sin-that is, of human nature.

II
The above argun1ent vie,vs miracles on the back-
ground of sin-as God's protest against the false
imagination or moral blindness which sin begets in
the minds of men. This is, on the ,vhole, the Bible
view of n1Íracles. And, different as their basis in
evidence is, it applies to the Old Testament n1iracles
as well as those of the New. But there is another line
of argument ,vhich applies only to the nliracles of
Jesus Christ, and it starts from the belief that in
Christ we see something ne,v to human experience--
a ne,v level reached in creation-such as it may be
supposed ,vould have occurred in any case, even if sin
had never been. The argun1ent runs thus: If Christ
truly was, what His disciples came to believe Him to
be, the eternal \V ord or Son of God, Hinlself very God,
n1ade man or " flesh," there ,vas thereby constituted
a ne,v thing in nature, a ne,v relation of the Creator
Spirit, the Spirit of Life, to matter, a ne,v level in the
evolution of life, such as ,vould naturally exhibit new
phenomena. From this point of view "the works"
of Christ are natural in His case-the natural out-
flo,vings of the power which He alone, or He first,
possessed. It was "natural') that He, being ,vhat
He ,vas, should so heal the sick, should so control
nature, should so be raised from the dead, as is related
in the Gospels. In a phrase of Athanasius's, it is all
" in rational sequence "-it is ,,,,hat would be expected
in the case of such a person.
There are signs in the Ne,v Testament of this sort
of conception of Christ's miracles as His natural
",vorks," the natural expression of a hitherto un-
17

242 THE PREJUDICE EXA1\IINED
cXfunpleù nature. So the centurion, 'v hose faith Jesus
so strongly commended, I sees in Him one doubtless
subordinate to God, but nevertheless, ,vithin God's
,vorld, holding so lofty a position that nature must
obey His commands, even as in the ,vorld of the
Roman Empire he himself, as centurion, though he
,vas a man " under authority," the authority of his
imperator, was yet able to con1mand-to say to this
man Go, and he goeth, and to that n1an Come, and he
cometh. Such a command over the forces of nature
he instinctively feels to belong to Christ. l\liracles of
control over nature are 'v hat he ,vould expect in the
case of such a person. So elsC"\vhere in the Gospel
there is attributed to Christ a certain kind of inherent
" po,ver" ,vhich, apparently like a natural force,
faith in the sick can dra,v out to heal them, and only
faith can dra,v out. \Vhen the ,voman ,vith an issue
of blood touched the garment of Jesus, He perceived
that virtue or healing po,yer-the "po,ver that ,vas
in Hin1 "-had gone forth.' And on another occasion,
,vhere faith ,vas lacking, it is said that He could do no
mighty ,yorks. II Such phrases suggest a "natural"
faculty ,vhich could heal the sick and raise the dead-
a " natural" outpouring of inherent life-giving power,
,vhich a certain lack of response could restrain or
inhibit. So in the case of our Lord's o,vn death,
Peter, after he has recovered fron1 his n10ral blindness,
sees in the resurrection of Jesus nothing astonishing.
As the prophet had foreseen, in the case of such an
one, the very idea of the corruption of death ,vas
impossible to entertain-" it ,vas not possible that
he should be holden of death." ,
In the face of the actual evolution of the universe,

1 :Matt. viii. 9. 2 Mark v. 30. S l\lark vi. 5.
4 Acts ii. 24; cf. John ;x. 18.

CIIRIST A NE\V LEVEL

243

such an argument is quite legitimate. For from the
point of vie,v of evolution it is untrue that the future
must ahvays rescmble or has al,vays resembled the
past. Nature has not been in this sense uniform.
Weare bound to think of it as disclosing successive
layers or stages, each successive layer or stage
exhibiting la,vs or phenomena of its o,vn, ,vhich from
the point of view of the lo,ver level would appear
miraculous. 1
Thus, ho,vever life emerged out of a merely
mechanical universe, it emerged as a ne,v thing ,vith
new law's. Plants gro,ving
nd beasts moving are
miraculous from the point of vie,v of inanimate nature.
Inanimate nature and its la,vs cannot explain these
gro,vths and motions. So human, rational beings,
when first they builded and planted, ho,vever they
emerged upon the world's surface, were doing a new
thing, exhibiting a quite ne,v po,ver of moulding
nature to their purposes. Their mastery of nature
was miraculous from the point of vie,v of merely
animal life. A ne,v level had been attaincd, and it
exhibited ne,v marks of activity. The future, in
,vhich they ,vere the pronlinent feature, did not
resemble the past. In the same way, when Christ
came, in His person ,vas a ne,v relation of life and
mind to matter, and He ,vould naturally, as a " nc,v
creation," exhibit a ne,v kind of control over nature.
It must be recognized that the old objection to
miracles as urged by Spinoza, and still by Renan and

1 Cf. Pringle Pattison, Idea of God, pp. 97, 104-5: "a new plane
or level of existence, qualitatively different, and, through that
difference, opening up a new range of possibilities"; "actual
, increments' or 'lifts' in the process, where quantity may be sa.id
to pass into quality, differences of degree into differences of kind."
" Each new fact in turn must be sheerly unintelligible if we take
our stand at the stage òelow." Cf. Haldane, Ope cit., pp. 125 fi.

244 THE PREJUDICE EXAl\IINED
his contemporaries, represented the dominance in
the domain of science of the mathen1atical sciences.
The norm of science ,vas physical mechanism. Re-
cently the normative influence of biology has become
dominant. And biology den1ands ne\v categories
\vhich physics and chClnistry cannot supply. They
cannot account for the behaviour of living things.
Thus the arguIlJCnt is quite valid that-granted
(what in fact we are not considering in this volume)
that Christ cannot be reasonably accounted merely
as man, but must be interpreted as God incarnate-
He must be expected to exhibit actions natural to
Hin1, ,vhich ,voulù be " miraculous" from the point
of vie,v of the nature \vhich lies belo,v Him.
Some apologists 1 for miracles have laid their n1ain
stress on this kind of argunlent. They have insisted
that Christ's nlÍracles are natural to His person.
Nevertheless, it must be admitted that this separation
of the miracles of Christ from all other miracles is
not what the New Testament as a whole suggests.
It seenlS to den1and an explanation of the miracles
of Christ ,vhich (apart from all question of evidence I)
,vould assimilate theln to those of the Old Testament
as acts of God. In the Old Testament they are
represented as acts of God ,vrought to show His
purpose for Israel and to ensure that purpose. So in
the Ne\v Testament the miracles done by Christ, or in
His case, are represented as the acts of God who sent
Him bearing ,vitness to Him. I They are attributed
to the Divine Spirit ,vho ind,velt Him,' and (often) are
pictured as done by God in ans\ver to the prayer of
1 Including myself in Bampton Lectures, lect. ii.
2 See later, p. 248.
I E.g. Acts ii. 22, 24, x. 38, 40, xvii. 31. This is the constant
mode of expression.
t "\fatt. xii. 28: Acts x. 38.

l\IIRACLES NOT ARBITRARY 245
Jesus. 1 In a word, they are abnormal acts of God
done to call attention to His Christ. So specially the
resurrection is the act of God marking out and finally
designating Jesus as His Son and as His authorized
representative through ,vhom He is to judge the ,vorld.
That is to say, our thoughts are in the main directed by
the n1iracles not to the special nature of Christ but to
the nature of God as transcendent Creator, under ,vhose
hands nature is plastic and must fulfil all His "rill.
Thus we come back to the sole question ,vhich
really occupies us in this chapter. There can be no
doubt that one ,vho holds the prophetic doctrine of
God the Creator can find no a priori difficulty about
the miracles of the Bible. They are not un,vorthy
of God. They are not arbitrary acts. They are
the exhibition froIn time to time of His special purpose
in the ,vorld in connexion with Israel or with Christ,
an exhibition given as it ,vere in protest against the
blindness of a sin-perverted ,vorld. They are not
perversions of the real order of the ,vorld, but acts
done to wrench back a sin-perverted world into its
proper order. They are part of a redemptive process
,vhich seeks the restoration of the divine order in
nature, not its overthrow. Thus we come back at
last to our original question-Is the invincible re-
pugnance to entertaining the reality of miracles,
bred in the mind by physical science, a legitimate,
repugnance? Is the practically prohibitive prejudice
against miracles which it generates really rational ?
Or, in other words, is the scientific vie,v of nature
legitin1ately exclusive of any other vie,v?
There can be no question-as has been already
noticed-that any study exclusively pursued tends
to narrow the mind. "No man having drunk old
1 Matt. xxvi. 53; John xi. 42.

24G TI-IE PREJUDICE EXAl\lINED
,vine dcsireth ne,v. He saith the old is good." No
D1an having become through long years exclusively
absorbed in the scientific conception of nature as
the scene of invariable la,v can fail to resent the
occurrence of miracles. But we contend science is
not the only legitimate avenue to reality. The
moralistic approach is at least as real. From that
point of vie,v tbc moral ,viII of God and the fact
of moral freedonl in man and the vast portent of
universal sin become the prominent facts, and the
philosophy of divine reden1ption, and with it of
miracles, becomes intelligible and acceptable.
The two points of vie,v are practically not the least
incompatible.
Iiracles, it Inust be remembered, are
on all showing very rare occurrences. That is of
their essence. They do not occur as a hindrance in
the path of the scientific investigator. IIis postulated
world of fixed la,vs is before him all the same, whether
personally he believes in certain miracles or no. All
that is asked of him as a scientific man is that he
should recognize the abstraction of his sciences, and
seek to impose no dogmatic or a priori barrier against
the conception of the possibility or credibility of
n1Ïracles-a possibility and credibility ,vhich are, as
has been sho,vn, really bound up ,vith faith in the
God of the prophets and of Jesus Christ.

III
But there are many-historians and students of
history-who might read this sort of argument ,,,,hich
we have been advancing and feel that it does not in
any sense meet their case; but ,vho at the same time
would be unaffected by any exhibition of the strength
of the historical evidence for (let us say) the corporal
resurrection of Christ from the dead. 'Vhat closes

TIlE IIISTORICAL OBJECTION 247
their minds a priori to evidence is not any abstract
conception of nature, but ,vhat they ,vould describe
as a general deduction from history. "Religious
history," they \vould say, " is full of reported miracles,
son1e of theln reported by eye-,vitnesses or on what
appears to be very strong evidence. But ,ve have
ceased to believe thcIn. \Ve either regard them as
the influence of certain po,verful personalitics upon
other men's minds and bodies, ,vhich is a fact of
nature such as is described under the general head
of 'suggestion,' or of 'auto-suggestion,' ,vhich is
akin to it. Or ,ve believe that under certain con-
ditions men's nlinds are so obsessed with the demand
for miracle that they 'see' what they desire to
see and their reports have no objective value. We
notice that the more reasonable apologists for Bible
n1Íracles have given up the attempt to maintain
almost all the nature-miracles of the Bible, i.e. those
that defy any naturalistic interpretation-for the
miracles of healing as recorded can be interpreted
as not more than exaggerations of actual facts. No
one no,v maintains that Balaam's ass really spoke
or that the sun really 'stood still' at Joshua's
behest. Nor is any claim put in for the ecclesiastical
miracles. They only claim the real occurrence of the
nature miracles of the Ne,v Testament or S0111e of
them, especially the miraculous birth and corporal
resurrection of Jesus Christ. By this process of
gradual withdra,val they show that they are fighting
a losing battle. And the sooner they cease to fight
it, the better in the interests of religion." 1
But such an argument is full of misrepresentation.
For my own part, though I am not disposed to think
1 Such:an argument I have seen proceeding from Dr. Sanday's pen,
bu(unpublished.

248 TIlE PREJUDICE EXAl\IINED
that the ass on ,vhich
Balaam rode really uttered
human ,vords or that the poetry of the book of
Jasher can assure us of a real alteration having taken
place in the normal motions of the bodies of our
solar system, yet I anI not at all disposed to " give
up " the claÌln for miracle in Old Testament history.
The miracles of the Old Testament are mostly to
be found either in 'onnexion ,vith the redemption of
Israel from Egypt, and the foundation of their polity
under l\Ioses, or ,vith the prophetic lninistry of
Elijah and Elisha. I think it is highly likely that
these great moments in the history of redemption
had really miraculous accompaniments. But the
conditions of evidence make the vindication of this
belief inlpossible. The ,vritten records of Exodus
and Joshua cannot be proved to date within three
centuries of the events recorded. The memory of
them appears to have lived in popular songs. What
exactIy occurred cannot be defined. In the same
way the ,,'ritten record of Elijah's and Elisha's
activities appears to date from SOllle 150 years after
their lives. "They read like a transcript of a vivid
oral tradition," ,vhich had lived in the schools of the
prophets and in the nlouths of the people for genera-
tions. Upon such a tradition no reliance can be placed
in estimating ,vhat exactly occurred. As to the
"ecclesiastical miracles," some of them rest upon
very good evidence, and a fe'\v of them I should feel
it was unreasonable scepticisnl to doubt. But it
must be recognized that fronl the fourth century
on'\vards, '\vith increasing force, there was in the
Christian Church such a demand for miracles in con-
nexion '\vith saints as appears to have led to their
manufacture on the largest s<;ale. Shortly 1 I shaH
1 See below, p. 261.

THERE IS NO LIKE CASE 249
have reason to cite in this sense the unimpeachable
evidence of the great Bollandist-the Père Delehaye.

Ioreover, nothing in ecclesiastical history turns upon
any particular miracle. And in arguing about any
one of them you are arguing about supposed events
,vhich belong to a deeply discredited type. So it is
reasonable, I think, that the argument concerning
the real occurrence of miracles should be specially
conducted upon the ground where their significance is
obvious, ,vhere the discrediting atmosphere is, as will
appear, absent on the ,vhole, and where the evidence
can be, as again ,vill appear, very precisely estimated.
Further, I shall have occasion to demur to the idea
that the miracles of healing in the N e,v Testament
admit of a naturalistic interpretation. They only
admit of this if they are so reduced in magnitude as
really to cease to be the events recorded. The
untrustworthiness of the actual narrative as compared
to what would result, if the necessary reduction is
allowed, is so great that it can hardly be relied upon
at all for any purpose.
Thus I entirely deny that the historians can plead
their general distrust of miracles in religious history
as an excuse for refusing to give serious consideration
to a particular group of recorded miracles, ,vhich, I
think it will appear, have no parallel elsewhere in the
known history of the ,vorld in respect of the con-
ditions under which they are recorded to have
occurred. Again, all I ask of historians is the absence
of the a priori dogmatic prejudice: granted this, let
them exercise the freedom of criticism to the full.

IV
There is one not unimportant element of present..day
thought ,vhich must be noted-that is, the wide-

250 TIlE PREJUDICE EXA
IINED
spread tendency among not unintelligent people to
believe that nliracles are even to-day of fairly frequent
occurrence-such, I mean, as are reported from
Lourdes, or are ascribed to spiritual healers or to the
contemporary Christian Sadhu,I or are said to be
,vorked under the influence of "Christian science,"
or, ,vhat may perhaps turn out to be very important,
such as are recorded by spiritists-that is, the move-
ments of furniture or other nlaterial objects, which
apparently, if they are truly reported, must be
ascribed to the action of beings-discarnate spirits-
from another ,vorld.:5 If, as a distinguished man of
science asserts,. a table in a modern drawing-room
"made most caressing movements to and fro, and
seemed as if it could not get close enough" to his
,vife, ,vith motions expressive of affection, because
nloving at the ,vill of his departed son, and expressing
his feelings-then certainly our physical ,vorld is
not a closed ,vorld, but is open to influences from
the beyond ,vhich can materially affect its phenomena.
The intrusion of unseen forces (the wills of spirits)
can cause that to occur which "in the course of
nature" could not have occurred at all. I imagine
that if intelligent people in general come to believe
such events really to occur, they ,viII not be likely
to disbelieve the miracles of the Gospel to have really
occurred. I express no opinion, and indeed I am not
qualified to express an opinion, on the reality of such
occurrences. I confess an intense mental repugnance
to the admission of their reality. But I seem to
1 The Sadhu, Streeter and Appasamy: cf. above, p. 36.
2 These would come under the head of miracles or signs, as the
words are used in the N.T. to doscribe events in nature due, not to
the will and action of God or of Christ, but of other spirits (l\Iark xiii.
22; 2 Thess. H. 9).
8 Sir Oliver Lodge: see Raymond, pp. 216 and 263.

SUl\ll\lARY OF REPLY

251

myself to be becoming more and morc nlercly old-
fashioned ,vith regard to them. It seems to me quite
likely that the ncxt generation will find themselves
in an intellectual ,vorld the attitude of ,vhich
to"Tards miracles will bc not unlike thc attitude of
the Roman Empire, but quite unlike the attitude of
the educated ,vorld of the last generation; and by the
attitude of the Roman Empire, I mean a disposition
to accept such occurrences, without generally attri-
buting very much importance to them.

However, enough has perhaps been said on the
a priori credibility of miracles. l\-Iy contention is
threefold. First, that the evidence of the strictly
miraculous in the New Testament is such that, as
will appear, nothing can resist it but a predetermined
mind possessed with the conviction that it is, if not
impossible, yet incredible. Secondly, that it is neither
impossible nor incredible, if the God of the prophets
and of Jesus is the real God, if the world is what the
Bible represents it as being, disturbed and distorted
by the rebellion of free wills, and if the redemptive
or recreative purpose of God needs such a manifes-
tation of His po,ver in the physical world to make
it effective. Thirdly, that there is no ground for the
assumption-the only assumption which can really
arm our minds against the evidence-that the physical
world which science investigat
s, the "
orld of con-
stant physical sequence and invariable law, is a self..
complete and closed world, ,vhich can admit no
influence from any other world. The evidence is
against this theory of a self-complete enclosure, which
cannot account for the action of human wills.

CHAPTER XI

THE HISTORICAL EVIDENCE

\VE have sought to set aside the a priori prejudice
against miracles ,yhich, regarding thenl as impossible,
or at least incredible, is bound to find some ,yay of
disposing of the historical evidence, however cogent.
This a priori dognlatism, ,ve have argued, both is in
itself unjustifiable, as being based upon an untenable
vie,v of nature and naturalla,vs, and also, in eliminat-
ing the large miraculous element from the Gospel
narrati ve, leaves the ,vhole residual picture presented
by the Gospels incoherent, unconvincing, and so
uncertain as to be capable of any kind of arbitrary
interpretation. If our imaginations are purged of
this prejudice and ,ve approach the Gospels ,vith
open mind
, \ve find ourselves presented in the
Synoptists ''lith a picture of Jesus of extraordinary
impressiveness, such as ,ve cannot conceive to have
been an imaginative invention.
Let us consider, first of all, the Gospel of St. l\Iark.
We have already taken note of its characteristics, and
have seen reason to believe that in its main bulk it
represents, as the subapostolic tradition tells us, the
teaching of Peter ,,,,ritten down, after repeated
hearing, by the perfectly simple-minded disciple
John 1\Iark. I t bears all the marks of the eye-
\vitness's story. It is extraordinarily lifelike. Also
it is full of miracles. Of these the most are miracles
of healing 'v hich, as they are recorded, go quite beyond
252

:\IIRACLES AND 'VORDS 253
anything ,vhich admits of naturalistic interpretation.'
But amongst them are "nature miracles "-the
stilling of the storm and the feeding of the multitude
,vith the few ioaves a.nd fishes. 1 This last, as \ve
have already observed, is quite plainly an account of
a nlÌracle wrought to appease natural appetite; and
to transform it into a quasi-sacranlental communion,
as Dr. Sanday \vould have us do, in which each par-
ticipant received but a tiny fraglnent, does violence
to the whole context.
We note again and again ho,v the miracles give
occasion for unmistakably genuine sayings or gestures
of Christ, such as: "That ye may kno,v that the Son
of l\Ian hath power on earth to forgive sins.". "Go
thy \va y, show thyself to the priest . . . for a testimony
unto them.". "Is it la,vful on the Sabbath day to
do good or to do harm? To save a life or to kill? . . .
And he looked round about on then} \vith anger,
being grieved at the hardening of their hearts." I
"How can Satan cast out Satan?'" "And he
himself was in the stern, asleep on the cushion. . . .
'Vhy are ye fearful? Have ye not yet faith?" 7
" And straightway Jesus, perceiving in himself that
the power proceeding from him had gone forth,
turned about. . . . Thy faith hath made thee ,vhole ;
go in peace." 8 "Talitha cU'lni " · (the actual Aramaic

1 See Dr. Reginald Ryle in Hibbert Journal, April 1907, "The
Neurotic Theory of the :Miracles of Healing."
2 As has been explained, it is not at a
.unlikely that the "feeding
of the four thousand" is really an account of the same incident as
the" feeding of the five thousand" -an independent account, which
St. }lark received from some other source than St. Peter, and mis-
took for a separate event. The two accounts differ in nothing except
the figures. I l\fark iii. 23.
a :Mark ii. 10. 7 l\-Iark iv. 38-40.
, l\lark i. 44. ·
Iark v. 30-4.
I
1a.rk iii. 4-5. · Mark v. 41.

2
4 TIlE 1IISTORtCAL EVIDENC

,vords given). "Give ye them to cat." 1 "Be of
good cheer: it is I; be not afraid.'" " It is not
meet to take the children's bread and to cast it
to dogs." I "If thou canst! All things are
possible to him that believeth.". We note ho,v
lack of faith in the people lin1its the po,ver of the
Healer, I and ho,v the blind man at Bethsaida is
gradually healed. 8 .. In a word, the ,vhole picture,
full as it is of miracles, ovenv helms us ,vith the sense
of reality.
Next let us turn to the material in the Synoptic
Gospels 'v hich is common to St. l\Iatthe,v and St.
Luke, and not derived from St. l\Iark. This is gene-
rally supposed to represent the earliest of the
,vritten "Gospels," ,,"hich is regarded as having
consisted mainly, though not exclusively, of an
account of our Lord's teaching, and is commonly
designated as "the Source," or Q. About the nature
and scope of such a document it is not possibJe to
speak with any certainty, but at least there lies
behind the First and Third Gospels a mass of common
material ,vhich is probably the earliest record ,ve have
of Jesus, earlier than the Gospel of l\Iark. Though
it seems to have been in the main a record of His
teaching, yet the implications of miracle are both
abundant and exceptionally convincing. First \ve
should note the account of the Temptation of our
Lord, which we cannot hesitate to ascribe to our
1 Mark vi. 37. 2 l\Iark vi. 50. 8 Mark vii. 27.

Mark ix. 23. I may add that in one of the miracles recorded
only by St. Luke-the healing of the ten lepers-we notice the same
convincing association with the miracle of a self-evidencing saying:
" \Vere there not ten cleansed, but where are the nine? U etc.
(Luke xvii. 12-19). See also tho characteristic action and speech
of Peter given only by St. Luke in the story of the miraculous
draught of fishes (Luke v. 8).
i Mark vi. 5. e l\Iark viii. 22 fI.

TIlE GROUND-DOCDI\IEN1'S 255
Lord IIinlself. It is the account of a spiritual tcnlp-
tation given in material forms-a temptation, or
series of temptations, strikingly unlike those of
ordinary men, but profoundly suggestive of genuine-
ness in connexion \vith the person of Jesus. The
tenlptations are plainly those of a man starting on a
great spiritual enterprise-the bringing in of the
Kingdom of God-and fully conscious of extraordinary
powers over nature. They have no meaning save
for one \vho could, if He ,vould, turn stones into
bread, and amaze the people by alighting in the
midst of them from the temple pinnacle. But He
refuses to exercise His miraculous po\ver for the
satisfaction of His physical appetite or the astonish-
nlent of the people.! Then ,ve have the healing of
the centurion's servant,! ,vhere this observant
Gentile recognizes in Jesus one-doubtless not
supreme in nature, for He is under God-but holding
in the economy of the ,vorld of nature a po\ver like
that which an officer holds in the Roman army over
the men subject to him. He can surely command
the services of nature \vith an unquestioned authority.
And our Lord blesses the discerning faith of the
Roman officer with the strongest commendation, and
proves the truth of his discernment by exhibiting
His po\ver. Again, the habitual miraculousness of
Christ's action is disclosed in His ans,ver to the
messengers of John the Baptist, ,vho bring the
question of his doubting spirit. S He bade them report
to John the ,vonderful ,yorks 'v hich they had seen;
"The blind receive their sight, and the lame walk,
the lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, and the

1 1tIatt. iv. 1 fi.; Luke iv. 1 fi.
2 :Matt. viii. 5-10; Luke vii. 1-10.
a :Matt. xi. 2 fi. ; Luke vii. 18 fl.

256 THE HISTORICAL EVIDENCE
dead are raised up "; and the saying is noteworthy
because among the ,vonderful ,yorks insisted upon is
U the preaching the good tidings to the poor," and
the insufficiency of miracles to generate faith is
suggested by the ,yarning, " Blessed is he whosoever
shall not be offended in me." Once more, we have
the denunciation by Jesus of Chorazin and Bethsaida
and Capernaum for not giving heed to the po,vers
lIe had ,vrought among them, ,vhich implies a great
multitude of unrecorded miracles. 1
Occasionally ,ve seem to note a greater courage in
St. l\Iark (or in St. Peter) in recording things
xactly
as they ,vere, e.g. the limitation on the po,ver of
Jesus to heal where faith ,vas lacking in those around
Him-" He could do no mighty works, because of
their unbelief "-which is not reproduced by St.
1\Iatthe,v or St. Luke. Again, in one passage of
St. l\'Iatthew, where Jesus is represented, as in the
other Synoptists, as transmitting to his disciples the
power to ,york miracles of healing, ,ve notice a
heightening of the picture: " Heal the sick, raise the
dead, cleanse the leper, cast out devils. Freely ye
have received, freely give" I; ,vhere l\lark refers only
to healing generally and mentions particularly the
method of anointing. S But this heightening of the
miraculous colouring is not discoverable generally or
to any considerable extent. The picture is sub-
stantially identical in all the Synoptic Gospels. Owing
indeed to the fewness of the discourses of Jesus recorded
by IvIar k, the picture of the miraculous worker is in
higher relief in his narrative than in any of the other
Gospels. But in all of them the authority to work
1 Matt. xi. 21 fi.; Luke x. 13 fi. On all these elements in Q, see
Hea.dlam, The Miracleø oj the G08pÙØ, p. 182.
2 Matt. x. 8. 8 Mark vi. 13.

EVIDENCE OF :M
IRACLES 257
miracles and the spiritual authority to teach and to
forgive are represented as inseparable the one from
the other. Here is a real man, but a real 111an endowed
with the authority of God morally and physically.
This is the irresistible impression.
In all the Gospels we note the relatively subordinate
evidential position assigned to the wonderful works
of Jesus. He "\vas no mere wonder-,vorker, though
He "\vorked wonders. This is made evident in the
account of His te1l1ptation. He ,vould not obtain
belief by dazzling 111en. He kne,v the worthlessness
of such belief. "If they hear not
Ioses and the
prophets, neither will they be persuaded,' 1 in any
really spiritual sense, by a supernatural occurrence.
This appears to be the interpretation of our Lord's
stern refusal to meet the demand of the scribes and
Pharisees for a " sign" or a " sign from heaven." ·
This appears to 111ean S01l1e public demonstration of
miraculous po,ver on a great scale "\Yrought to prove
demonstratively His divine authority. And this He
would not give. His n1Îracles "\vcre incidental. They
issued from a pity "\vhich knew that it had power
to heal men's sicknesses and supply their physical
needs, and could not refrain from using it; but they
were rather concealed than advertised; or they were
ele1l1ents in the training of the disciples to trust Him
utterly; or if occasionally they "\vere intended to
serve, like the healing of the paralytic man, as proofs
to the eye of the spiritual authority "\vhich He claimed,
they were still incidental or unprelneditated, and in
presence of a relatively snlall company. It is difficult
to state with any accuracy exactly "\vhat function our
1 Luke ;xvi. 31.
t Ma.rk viii. 11; Matt. xvi. 1; cf. Matt. xii. 38-42, Luke xi. 16,
29 ft.; cf. also 1 Cor. i. 22, " The Jews ask for signs."
18

258 TIlE IIISTORICAL EVIDENCE
Lord seems to desire IIis miracles to fulfil, but at lea
t
it is quite clear that he absolutely refused to astonish
men into belief, kno,ving that such a belief would be
of no spiritual value. "There shall no sign be given
them but the sign of the prophet Jonah "-that is,
the sign of the word of righteousness. l
There ,vas in the Roman Empire at this date a
,videspread curiosity for the mere" ,vonder" divorced
from any moral associations. This is very ,yell
exemplified in the account ,vhich Tacitus! gives us of
the public" miracles" of healing ,vrought by Vespasian
at Alexandria upon a blind man and a man with a
dislocated hand, ,vhich he records as evidences of
divine favour to,vards the Emperor. At the instiga-
tion of the god Serapis-that is, doubtless, the priests
in his temple-these men urgently demand to be
respectively touched by the Emperor's spittle and
trodden upon by his foot. Vespasian's first impulse
is to treat the idea as ridiculous. Then his vanity
contends ,vith his fear of ridicule. He becon1es more
and more impressed ,vith the opportunity, as the
men are urgent and flatterers encourage him. He
seeks medical advice. The doctors' answers are
various, but they declare that the blind man's faculty
of sight is not extinguished and could be recovered
" if obstacles ,vere removed," and that the maimed
n1an's dislocated joints could be restored to their
proper functions if health-giving force ""ere applied.
They encourage Vespasian to believe that he has

1 It is notable that the Greek word for cc miracle" or cc wonder"
is never used in the Gospels, except for miracles of evil origin
(1tlark xiii. 22; 1tlatt. xxiv. 24). "Powers" is the characteristic word
in the Synoptists (cf. :r.lark vi. 5), and "signs" or "works" in
St. John. These words carry moral and spiritual associations, as
distinct from the mere marvel.
2 Hist. iv. 81.

CONTRAST TO PAGAN l\IIRACLES 259
been chosen by the gods for this divine ministry.
They add that if he succeeds, it ,vill be to the glory
of Caesar, and, if he fails, that the ridicule will
fall upon the two unfortunate men. So Vespasian,
in a burst of confidence in his fortunes, ,vith a joyful
countenance makes the attempt, in presence of a
multitude watching intently, and with immediate
success. The one man got back the use of his hand,
the other the sight of his eyes. And surviving
witnesses still, Tacitus says, speak of the event,
though by his day lying could bring them no ad-
vantage.
No,v, whatever interpretation we put upon this
narrative, ,ve must recognize in it a very marked
contrast to the spirit of the Gospel narratives-in the
total absence of moral associations or conditions or
results attached to the ,vorking of the miracles. That
is the point insisted upon by Origen in his book
against Celsus. 1 He does not seem to deny the
occurrence of miracles in the pagan world, but hc
points to the fact that the n1iracles of the Gospels
,vere wrought to make men morally better, and as
part of a great divine act of moral redemption for
mankind.
It is in accordance with this Christian tendency to
value miracles only as instruments of moral instruction
that, among the miracles of Jesus and his disciples,
those ,vhich rnade most in1pression-apart from the
central and all-in1portant miracle of the resurrection-
were the castings-out of evil spirits of which we get
such graphic descriptions in the Gospels. They ,vere
found specially impressive because the greater part
of the world lived in a terror of evil spirits, ,vhich was
paralysing and degrading, and these acts of redemp-
1 See Origen, c. Oelsum, iii. 28, 29.

260 THE IITSTORICAL E\1IDENCE
tion manifested the power of Jesus to emancipate
men from the slavery of this terror and enable them
to lift up their heads as free men, sons of an Almighty
Father.
Of the mere desire for the marvellous or the fear of
it, "re have examples in the Gospels in the desire of
Herod Anti pas to "" see Jesus, for he hoped to have
seen some D1iracle done by him "; and in his earlier
belief (if it ,vas serious) that Jesus ,vas John the
Baptist risen again. Perhaps there are passages in
the Acts ,vrnch seem to suggest in the earliest Church
a demand for miracles not unlike that of the mediaeval
Church. 1 But this is not the temper of the disciples
in the Gospels. They accept D1iracles readily enough.
They create no difficulty in the mind of any Ne\v
Testament ,vriter. But there is no such demand for
them as would Ì1nagine thClTI and ascribe reality to
the imagination. A sign of this is the fact that no
miracles ,vere ascribed to one 'v ho came "" in the
spirit and po,ver of Elijah" and WhOIl1 all reverenced
as a great prophet-" John did no miracle." I In fact,
the disciples appear in the Synoptic Gospels as very
unimaginative men, and the miracle-hunger is not
in them. Indeed, for the first three centuries of
Christianity there ,vas comparatively little stress
laid upon miracles as "" evidences," except on the
great crucial miracle of the resurrection; and though
there is occasional mention of contemporary miracles, a
yet Chrysostom speaks plainly of "" signs" or miracles
as no longer occurring, and explains that they were
needed as guarantees of the divine intention when
the new religion or manner of life had to be first

1 Acts v. 15, xix. 11 fi. 2 2 John x. 41.
8 See Origen on the "traces" of the old power still fOtmd in the
Church, o. Ods. i. 2, iii. 24. Irenaeus uses more unequivocalla.nguage.

THE l\IEDIAEV AL SPIRIT

261

estaLlished among men, but are not needed now. I
Similar language occurs in other early ,vriters.
After that-in the fourth century-the temper
begins to prevail ,vhich found it necessary to attach
miracles to saints, in the same way as later painters
attached a halo to the saint's head. This temper
has been admirably and courageously described in
its monotonous consequences by the Dean of the
Jesuit company of Bollandists, ,,
ho have produced
and are producing the gigantic ,york of the Acta
SanctoT
l'tn. No OIle interested in Inediaeval credulity
should fail to read Fr. Delehaye's Légendes Hagio-
graphiques. 1 It is the almost universal prevalence
of this temper in the mediaeval Churches which makes
one justly sceptical about the records of miracles,
even when they appear to rest on very good evidence,
though it is very far from justifying universal dis-
belief. I
There are, in fact, two opposite tempers in men
,vhich are destructive of the kind of appeal which
the Gospel miracles make to reasonable men. One
is the temper of pure credulity, which demands
miracles and invents them in accordance ,vith its
desire. The other is the temper of a priori disbelief,
1 See Hom. in J,Jatt. xiv. 3, Hom in Epist. ad Col. viii. 5. In
Ep. Î. ad Cor. vi. 2, "Do not make the fact that signs do not occur
now an argument that they did not occur then [in New Testament
times]. They were useful then, but not now,"
2 Brussels, 1905; English trans. (Longmans), Legends oj the
Saints: an Introduction to Hagiography. .
3 Thus when we read (Suspicius Severns, Dial. iii. 13) of St.1.Iartin'8
anguish of conscience over his consent to communicate with those
who had promoted the execution of Priscillian for heresy, and learn
how he knew himself weakened through this sin, if it was a sin, in
his power of healing the sick, we feel sure that :l\Iartin believed him-
self to have, as his contemporaries undoubtedly believed him to have,
such power. Some mediaeval miracles rest on evidence that Beems
to be conclusive.

LI f{ ,

i S-. A
1í\Y'S COLLEGE

262 THE IIISTORICAL EVIDENCE
which is bred of the modern spirit of physical science,
when it is misapplied, demanding for events claimed
to be historical the sort of demonstration \vhich history
does not often supply. If there is anything certain,
it is certain that Jesus Christ did not intend to compel
men to believe in Him. Certainly, for instance, He
did not "prove" His resurrection from the dead
except to those \vhQ had already faith in IIim, though a
faith ,vhich had suffered eclipse. It "'rould have been
\vholly contrary to His principles of action to have
confuted His adversaries by physical demonstrations.
N o\V ,ve ,viII turn our attention a,vay from the
" po\yers " \vrought by Jesus or His disciples \vhich it
is impossible to disbelieve, to the" po\vers '
unhesita-
tingly believed by the first Christians to have been
,vrought by God upon Him or in His case-notably
His resurrection the third day from the dead, I-lis
ascension, and His birth of a virgin mother. l With
regard to these three miracles it \vill be necessary to
go into detail.

I. TIlE RESURRECTION
The denial of the real occurrence of tbe corporal
resurrection of Jesus is surely, from the point of vie,v
of historical criticism, a desperate paradox. The
Gospels sho\v us the disciples after the death of Jesus
as a dispirited band of lnen, ,vho had been gradually
disheartened by the seclning failure of Jesus, and
1 This distinction, however, between the miracles of Jesus and those
wrought by God in His case must not be pressed too far. The
miracles wrought by Jesus are in the New Testament commonly
regarded as acts of God wrought through Him by the power of God's
Spirit given to HiIn (see above, p. 244) ; and, on the other hand, in
John x. 18 (perhaps only there) Jesus speaks of Himself as rising by
His own inherent authority, though tllat authority comes from the
Father.

- THE RESURRECTION 263
finally utterly discouraged by IIis rejcction and
execution. "lVe hoped that it ,vas he which should
redeem Israel" 1 describes their state of mind. It
plainly appears that this sense of disappointment and
failure so possessed then1 and dominated them that
they could hardly be aroused from their lethargy.
Then the early chapters of the Acts present to us this
saIne body of !lIen confident and courageous-with a
courage 'v hich no hostility could shake. They had
plainly becn suddenly driven round a sharp corner
by the sort of impact which only SOlne strong external
force can exercise. And though they ,vere not
emotional men, but prosaic and slo,v of spiritual
apprehension, and men, it ,vould appear, liable to
jealousies and misunderstandings among themselves,
they had been transformed all together. It ,vas a
corporate transformation, which again suggests the
impact of some startling fact of common experience.
And to such a fact they manifestly appeal. Their
outlook has been changed by the grave of Jesus having
been fOlU1d en1ptyon " the third day" after His cruci-
fixion and burial, and aftenvards by repeated appear-
ances of the risen Jesus to individuals among them
and to the assembled group, by which their doubts had
been at last ,vholly dispelled, and a ne,y and glorious
conviction of the divinely certificated lordship of
Jesus had conle to possess them all in common.
The fact of the enIpty tomb seems to llle as indis-
putable as any fact of history. If ,ve find it no,v
impossible to suggest a deliberate fraud on the part
of the apostles I-and such a suggestion is negatived

1 Luke J{xiv. 21.
2 I suppose the currency among the Jews of the report of such
fraudulent action on their part must be assumed to account for

Iatt. xxviii. 13, 15. " His disciples came by night and stole him

264 THE HISTORICAL EVIDENCE
alike by their character and by the state of despond-
ency and hopelessness in ,,'hich they '\\
crc-thcre is
no plausible explanation of the empty tomb. As to
their experiences of the risen Christ, our earliest ,vritten
,vitness is that of St. Paul, ,vhich we must examine.
But we must remark that there can be no reason-
able doubt that ,vhat the apostles understood on the
evidence of the empty tomb and the appearances ,vas
a corporal resurrection-viz. that the body of Jesus had
been rescued from corruption and raised to a new
kind of life. Peter and Paul in the Acts are alike
represented as expressing the conviction that "he
sa,v no corruption." 1 No,v 'YC turn to St. Paul's
,vitness.
He wrote his First Epistle to the Corinthians in the
spring of A.D. 55. A current doubt among the
Corinthian Christians, not about the resurrection of
Jesus, but about the destiny of those of their number
,vho had passed away since they believed, leads
St. Paul to repeat with much precision ,vhat he had
taught them on his first visit to them in A.D. 50 or
51. But ,vhat he thcn taught them ,vas nothing of
his o,vn. It ,vas the COffilnon matter of the apostolic
testimony (" Therefore ,vhcther it be I or they [the
other apostles], so we preach and so ye believed" 1)-
it ,vas ,vhat he had" received" ,vhen he first became
a Christian-probably in precise form at his first
return to J erusalCln to " visit Cephas," that is Peter,
three years after his conversion, ,vhich had occurred
at some date soon after A.D. 80. What he taught them
then ,vas, as ,ve see, a sort of formulated record of

away. . . . This saying was spread abroad among the Jews until
this day." But we cannot feel complete confidence in the story of
the military guard.
1 Acts ii. 31, xiii. 37. S I Cor. xv. 11.

ST. PAUL'S EVIDENCE 26ð
the appearances, to which obviously he adds the
personal record of what he had himself seen on his
converSIon.
"No,v I make known unto you, brethren, the
gospel which I preached unto you, which also ye re-
ceived. . . . I make known, I say, in ,vhat ,vords 1 I
preached it unto you. . . . For I delivered unto you
first of all that ,vhich also I received, how that Christ
died for our sins according to the Scriptures; and
that he ,vas buried; and that he hath been raised on
the third day according to the Scriptures; and that
he appeared to Cephas; then to the t,velve; then he
appeared to above five hundred brethren at once, of
whom the greater part remain until now, but some
are fallen asleep; then he appeared to James; then
to all the apostles; and last of all, as unto one
born out of due time [an abortion], he appeared to
me also."
This enumeration squares very well with the
appearances recorded in the Gospels, save that it is
a record of appearances to the "chosen witnesses "
and omits the appearances to the disciples on the way
to Emmaus and, notably, those to the ,vomen. This
is very natural in a formal record drawn up by
Je,vs. Also no note is taken of some appearances,
recorded in the Fourth Gospel only. This again is
not surprising. The object of the Fourth Gospel was
largely to supply real (or as some would say, imagined)
inciden ts which the common -traditions had left
unnoticed. Granted these omissions, the summary
record in St. Paul squares well with the records or
intimations in the Gospels and Acts. There the appear-
ance to Peter alone is mentioned as occurring first, I
1 Or" with what purpose," "in what sense" j cf. Acts x. 29.
I Luke xxiv. 34.

266 'l'IIE IIISTORICAL EVI])ENCE
follo,ved by the appearance to the twelve.! The
appearance to the five hundred is necessarily an appear-
ance in Galilee, where alone there \vere so Inany
persons ,,
ho in some sense could be called disciples,
and it can be identified ,vith the appearance recorded
in St.l\iatthe,v. 1 Thc appearance to James is suggested
by the position ,vhich James is found occupying in
the prÏ111itive cOlllIUunity in the record of Acts. The
later appearance to all the Apostles is naturally
identified with that specified in Acts i. 4, 'v here the
sUlnlnary 'v hich concludes the author's earlier book,
the Gospel of Luke, is developed in more explicit
form. All this is very satisfying if the documents are
treated naturally as historical documents.
The attempts to evade the evidence of St. Paul
appear to me extraordinarily forced. Thus (I)
St. Paul'8 assertion that Christ both died and ,vas
raised the third day" according to the Scriptures" is
supposed to carry ,vith it the suspicion that the belief
in the resurrection the third day ,vas due to the felt
necessity for interpreting Scripture prophecy. But
this is most ÏInprobable. There is no prophecy
\vhich compelled any such belief. The particular
text of IIosea suggested (" After three days he "ill
raise us up and \ve shall live in his sight") has no
natural reference to Christ and cannot be sho\vn to
have carried any influence. It is most true, as our
Lord is recorded to have insisted, that there are pas-
sages in the Old Testament ,vhich present us ,vith a
suffering servant of Jehovah who fails and dies and
yet is divinely vindicated, passages which suggest
the idea of a vindication of the Christ through or
in spite of failure and death. But there ,vas nothing,
except the occurrences recorded in the Gospels, to
1 Luke xxiv. 36 fi. :I Matt. ;Kxviii. 16 fie

ST. PAUL'S EVIDENCE 267
account for the definite assertion "The third day he
was raised from the dead."
Nor, again, (2) is there any plausibility in the con-
stantly n1ade suggestion that as St. Paul's o,vn experi-
ence on the road to Damascus ,vas a vision of Christ
in glory, and as from heaven, so presulnably he
imagined the earlier visions of the apostolic company,
not at all as they are recorded in the Gospels. On
the contrary, St. Paul treats his O"\vn appearance as
abnormal in time-he uses the rather startling ex-
pression " an abortion "-and there is not the slightest
reason to suppose that he thought of the earlier
appearances as given under the same conditions.
(3) Nor, again, is there any plausibility in the sugges-
tion that inasmuch as St. Paul contemplates a resur-
rection of the departed members of the Church, ,vhich
is consistent ,vith their having suffered dissolution
of their physical bodies, and declares that" flesh and
blood [i.e. humanity under the physical conditions
of the present] shall not inherit the kingdom of God,'

so ,ve may suppose that he can have laid no stress
upon the resurrection of Christ's body, but only upon
His appearance in another "spiritual" body. If
,ve rcad the ,vhole passage we see that St. Paul has
in mind three different kinds of resurrection: (i) the
resurrection of Christ on the third day after His
death and burial; (ii) the resurrection of the since
departed Christians, whose bodies had been presum-
ably subject to the natural process of dissolution,
but ,vho ,vere to receive at the final coming of the
Christ in glory spiritual bodies, ,vhich ,vould be
both different from the bodies which had seen corrup-
tion and yet in physical continuity ,vith them, in the
,yay suggested by the grains sowed in the ground
and rotting there, but yet living again in the ears

268 THE HISTORICAL EVIDENCE
,vhich spring from their dissolution; and (iii) the
sudden transforlllation of those ,vho shall be actually
alive at the second coming, who" in a moment,"
" in the t\vinkling of an eye at the last trull1p," shall
be transformed from the state of present-day physical
life to the condition of the spiritual and glorified
bodies ,vhere,,-ith they shall be associated ,vith those
,vho ,vere dead and are no\v raised and ,vith Christ.
In all these three classes of cases St. Paul conceives
a transformation more or less gradual or sudden of
the natural body into the spiritual-" \ve shall all
be changed "-and quite plainly he finds the norm
or pattern in the resurrection of Christ, in whose case
he plainly conceives in the simplest manner that in
respect of that body in ,vhich He died and was
buried-in respect of that sallIe body He ,vas raised.
As to the condition of Christ's resurrection body,
he says nothing. 'Ve can only presume that he
modelled his conception of the resurrection body of
those who are in Christ upon ,,-hat he believed about
Christ the first-fruits. On this hypothesis he ,vould
have conceived of Christ's resurrection body as ,vhat
he calls spiritual ; and I think that the ideas suggested
in the Gospels agree very ,veIl ,vith this conception.
The risen Christ is represented as having passed out
of the grave clothes, leaving them to collapse, 1 and
as having left the tomb empty before the stone ,vas
rolled a,vay.1 IIenceforth He is not represented as
living here or there-in Jerusalem or in Galilee, at
this house or that, or moving hither or thither on foot.
He is translated apparently into a higher sphere of
being, out of ,vhich he manifests himself in one form
1 John xx. 6, 7 ; cf. Latham' 8 Risen ],1 aster (Cambridge Press, 1901),
p. 29. I Mark xvi. 6.

ST. PAUL'S EVIDENCE

269

or another as suits His spiritual purpose, appearing
in a room" ,yhen the doors "
ere shut" as one who
no longer felt physical obstacles, but ,vho could still
submit, if His purpose so demanded, to physical
conditions; as showing His ,vounded side and hands,
and even eating and drinking ,vith His disciples.
His condition is one of 'v hich hitherto men had never
had experience. His spiritual body ,vas material
indeed, but it ,vas one in which matter ,vas ,yholly
subservient to spiritual purpose, and no longer
in any way an impediment or a restraint. To me it
appears incredible that the evangelists could have
derived from any other source than the actual
experiences of the first disciples the subtle details
,vhich suggest the complex picture of the "spiritual
body" of Jesus after the resurrection.
1\Iy contention is, then, that we must accept St.
Paul's record in the only sense that it legitimately
bears, and read in the light of it the fragmentary
records of the evangelists. The apostles had a serious
sense of what it meant to be witnesses before the world
of a fact of quite transcendent and crucial in1portance.
They drew up their record in such a form as that in
which St. Paul gives it as the unanimous witness of
the apostles. Then the evangelists, according to their
special purposes in ,vriting and their special sources
of information, give us particular stories of this or
that appearance which can be ,voven into a continuous
and harmonious narrative, as is - successfully done by
Dr. Swete,l but with regard to 'v hich I do not feel the
least anxiety to deny discrepancies of detail, such as
occur al,vays in the unstudied narrative, of first-hand
witnesses. Certainly the evangelist St. Luke had no
very rigid conception of the accuracy required of a
1 Appearancu oj our Lord after H is P
Bion (:Ma.cmilla.n).

270 TIlE IIISTORICAL EVIDENCE
faithful recorder, as we see if ,ve compare the three
accounts he gives us of St. Paul's conversion-one by
himself and the t\yO others in reported speeches of
St. Paul, which differ in details; or, again, if we com-
pare his earlier account of our Lord's dealings ,vith
II is disciples after the resurrection, given in his
Gospel, where all appears as one single intervie,v,
,vith the account by the same author at the beginning
of the Acts, where the sequence of evcnts is made
much more explicit and clear. This unconstrained
naturalness of narrative is more convincing than
scrupulous accuracy.
There is only one serious apparent discrepancy in
the Synoptic narratives of the manifestations of Jesus
to His disciples after the resurrection. In St. l\Iark
and St. 1\Iatthe,v our Lord is represented as telling His
disciples on the eve of His passion that after He is
raised up He ,viII go before them into Galilee. l And
accordingly the message sent to them after the
resurrection through the women is that He is going
before them into Galilee, and that there they shall
see Him, as He said to them II; and in St. l\Iatthe\v
the only recorded appearance is in Galilee. S But the
appearances recorded by St. Luke are all at Jerusalem,
and there is nothing to suggest any injunction to go
into Galilee or any appearance there. This apparent
discrepancy disappears, however, if ,ve suppose that
our Lord intended IIis disciples, as St. l\Iark tells us,
to go at once into Galilee, but that delay occurred

1 l\lark xiv. 28; :L\Iatt. xxvi. 32.
2
Iark xvi. 7; l\Iatt. xxviii. 7.
8 As is well known, the conclusion of St.
Iark's Gospel, as we are
familiar with it (xvi. 9-20), appears to be a later addition by one
familiar with the First, Third, and Fourth Gospels. 'Ve can only
conjecture that St. :Matthew follows the course of St.
Ifirk as it
originally stood.

THE EVIDENCE OF THE GOSPELS 271
O'Villg to their unbelief and slo,vncss of heart. 1 They
needed to be reassured and convinced in Jerusalem,
and, according to the Fourth Gospel, it was eight days
before this conviction was gained by all of them. Z
This accounts for the earlier manifestations in J erusa-
Iem. St. Luke had special information about these
,vhich he gives us, and does not seem to have under-
stood the original intention of Jesus or its tardy fulfil-
n1ent. If this was so, we understand the relation of
the t,vo sets of appearances, both of which, as we have
seen, are implied in St. Paul's earlier summary.
Then after the appearance recorded by St. lVlatthe,v
they must have returned to Jerusalem and received
the injunction to tarry there till they were endued
,vith po,ver from on high. 1 The forty days specified
by St. Luke · gives time for this sequence of events.
1\Iy contention is, then, that the historical evidence
for the resurrection of our Lord the third day from the
dead and His subsequent manifestations of Himself to
IIis apostles is in the highest degree cogent. Nothing
can resist it, except the sort of treatment of the narra-
tives which can render insecure almost any historical
evidence. No doubt what makes it convincing is the
sense that this act of God in vindication of His Christ
is no mere portent, but something which our reason
needs and welcomes. The Bible records a long-drawn-
out process of divine redemption culminating in Jesus
Christ. His rejection and execution upon the Cross
would, taken by itself, have laid upon human faith an
impossible strain. There is no reason to believe that
anything at all resembling \vhat the Acts records could
1 Luke xxiv. 11, 25.
2 Even when they reached Galilee, the narrative of St. John xxi.
1-14 would suggest that they were still bewildered and did not
fully understand their mission.
3 Luke xxiv. 49; Acts i. 4. 4 Acts i. 3.

272 THE IIISTORICAL EVIDENCE
have happened except on the basis of a conviction
,vhich the resurrection alone could have generated
in the minds of the disciples. What they needed and
received in His corporal resurrection ,vas the assurance
that the po,ver of God-the Creator and ruler of the
,vhole world, material and moral-was, in spite of the
seen1Ïng failure of the Cross, on the side of Jesus. In
this supreme crisis nothing could reassure them but
such an evidence of divine purpose undefeated-such
a foretaste of the day of the Lord, the day ,vhen God
is to come into His o,vn. And for us still to-day the
ultimate trial of faith lies in the seeming weakness of
good in the conflict with evil. It is supremely hard
to believe that the whole po,ver of the universe really
and ultin1ately serves a moral purpose. It is only a
corporal nliracle such as the resurrection of Jesus
which gives us the needed reassurance that there is
only one sovereignty in the universe, the sovereignty
of the righteous God, the Father of our Lord Jesus
Christ, and that in the full nlcaning of the term
" Jesus is Lord."

II. THE ASCENSION OF CHRIST
The Ne,v Testament as a ,vhole is full of the con-
viction that Christ who was crucified was not only
raised from the dead, but also by the right hand of God
exalted to the seat of supreme sovereignty in the
heavens. 1 His" session at the right hand of God " is,
as has alw'ays been recognized, a symbolical state-
ment, for, on all showing, God has no right hand. But
the language used implies that the assumption into
glory was an historical event, something that happened
1 See Acts Ïi. 33-4; Rom. viii. 34; Eph. iv. 9, 10; 1 Tim. iii. 16;
Heb. i. 3, iv. 14, etc.; 1 Pot.. iii. 22; John vi. 62.

THE ASCENSION 273
at a particular date, and St. Luke gives us the story
of what occurred at the beginning of the Acts. This
story of the ascen5ion, as it presented itself to the
apostles' eyes, involved no fresh miracle. It ,vas
simply the last of a series of " manifestations," all of
,,"hich postulate in the risen body of Christ superiority
to the conditions of material bodies as we kno\v them.
This has been pointed out. All the appearances were,
it seems, condescensions to conditions of space and
material life to ,vhich the risen Christ \vas no longer
subject. Each ,vas a purposive "manifestation."
The last, the ascension, as St. Luke records it, was
of the same kind. It taught the lesson of Christ's
exaltation under the material symbol of a physical
rising. \r ery likely those whose minds \vere first
im pressed by this ascension believed, as we no longer
believe, that there is a place called heaven above our
heads, and that the path of the ascending Jesus ,vas
the ,yay thither. But still to-day, with our superior
kno,yledge of the cosmic system, there is no other
symbolic action which can be hnagined ,vhich could
convey the desired impression. Nor can we imagine
how, "\vithout some such impressive occurrence, bring-
ing the appearances of Christ to a decisive end, the
disciples could have reached the state of mind in
which we find them in the opening of the Acts, in
,vhich they are wholly \vithout expectation of any
more "manifestations" of Christ and \vholly set
on what is promised them-spiritual equipment for a
task of unknown magnitude. 1

1 Heavenly spirits appear as messengers both to convey the first
information of Chrisb's resurrection and on the occasion of the
ascension, appearing apparently as men, not with wings. If such
spirits exist normally unseen, I do not see why their occasional
materialization should be incrediblo.
19

274 TIlE IlISTORICAL EVIDENCE

III. THE VIRGIN BIRTH OF JESUS
A flood of controversy-both by ,vay of attack
and r
joinder-has been poured over this question
,vithin the last fifty years, and it has a be,vildering
effect upon a student. But it seenlS to me that
certain points enlerge sufficiently clearly, \\"hich I ,vill
endea vour to point out. 1
1. Great stress ,vas laid at the beginning of the
apostolic mission upon personal witness. The
personal ,vitness of the apostles had extended " from
the baptism of John unto the day that he [Jesus] ,vas
received up from us," and their preaching about Jesus
did not accordingly go farther back than the beginning
of the Lord's public ministry; and it ,vas solely on the
ground of this ,vitness, and especially on the ground of
the resurrection, that faith in Jesus was demanded.
Consequently nothing concerning His birth-except
His descent from David, which was apparently un-
disputed,' and that He belonged to the fan1ily of
Joseph the carpenter of Nazareth, who apparently
died before the public Ininistry began, and of l\lary,
,vho certainly survived into the early days of the
Church-entered into the first preaching of the
gospel or the first kno,vledge of the Church. Certainly
nothing concerning the birth of Christ was part of
that assurance on the basis of ,,"hich faith in Jesus
,vas claimed. I may add that it ought not to this day
to form part of the basis of the claim. This limitation
of the apostolic witness accounts for the silence of St.

1 Accurat.e and full information will be found in Dr. Box's Virgin
Birth of Ghrist (Pitman, 1916), and I may refer to my Dissertations
(J ohn l\Iurray), Diss. i.
2 :Ma.rk x. 47; Rom. i. 3; Heb. vii. 14.

THE VIRGIN BIRTH

275

l\Iark,l ,vho gives us in the main the cycle of Peter's
preaching, and the silence of St. Paul. If, however,
Luke was Paul's companion, and had gathered the
materials of his Gospel before Paul's first captivity
,vas over, he must surely have known all that Luke
knew and therefore the secret of the virgin birth. He
may very ,veIl have known it earlier. His faith in the
radical sinlessness of Christ-sinlessness, I mean, not
in fact only but in principle, inasmuch as Christ was
the new n1an, the sinless source of the ne,v manhood-
,vould have made the idea very agreeable to him.
But in any case, that he does not mention it seems to
me nothing more strange than that he does not men-
tion other crucial events of our Lord's life, as the
bestowal of the Holy Spirit at His baptism, or His trans-
figuration. This limitation of the apostolic preaching
accounts also for there being no narrative of the birth
in St. John's Gospel, which is essentially a record of per-
sonal experience, but in fact St. John's Gospel, written
at the end of the first century, sho,vs evident signs
that the ,vriter kne,v and believed the virgin birth.-
1 We note, however, that St. 1tlark apparently shrinks from the
phrase "the carpenter's son": see 1tfark vi. 3, compared to Matt. xiii.
55. It is probable that the latter phrase was original. Phrases
attributing paternity to Joseph recur in the other Evangelists, where
their meaning is guarded by t.he opening narratives.
2 There is a reading of John i. 13 witnessed to by a number of
fathers beginning from the second century-" who was born not of
bloods [i.e. not of the mixture of human seeds] nor of the will of the
flesh, nor of the will of a man [a husband], but of God "-which
directly describes our Lord's birth of a virgin, and not a few moderns,
like Dean Inge, find it convincing. For myself, I am disposed to
prefer the reading of the MSS. But I have no doubt that this com-
mon reading clearly presupposes the fact of the virgin birth. See
my St. John's Epistles, p. 139. Also I think Dr. Chase (Belief and
Creed, ?rIacmillan, p. 67 fi.) has made quite evident that St. John's
irony is apparent in vii. 42, and that the fact that Jesus was born at
Bethlehem is in his mind. Also I think Rev. xii. 4 has the narrativQ
of :Matthew behind it.

276 THE IIISTORICAL EVIDENCE
2. But ,vhen the first disciples had settled do,vn to
their faith in Jesus, on the basis of His resurrection and
IIis life and teaching and the lnission of His Spirit,
they nlust have enquired about Ilis birth and early
years and must have ,vanted to know everything that
could be kno,vn-all the nlore that even during our
Lord's nlinistry it ,vould appear as if scandal about
His birth ,vas not ullkno,vn. This appears to be
suggestcd in the taunt of thc Je,vs. 1 Any\vay, they
nlust have ,vanted to kno,v. It nlay very \yell have
been that during l\lary's life nothing ,vas said in public.
But Joseph must have taken steps before his death
to guard l\Iary's reputation, and l\Iary could not have
failed to leave her experience on record. So ,ve look
at the two accounts ,ve have got. The tffect is some-
,vhat over\vhehning. The account in l\latthew is
,vholly fronl the side of Joseph-his perplexities-the
divine guidance vouchsafed to hinl in dreams-ho\v
he became the guardian of the ne\v-born child through
strange perils-the further guidance ,vhich brought
him back from Egypt I and to Nazareth. This early
narratiyc of l\Iatthc\v exhibits the author's zeal to
find fulfilnlents of prophecy, but it very strongly
suggests a statement by Joseph underlying it. On the
other hand, the narrative in Luke i. and ii.-so plainly
a ,voman's story-if it is true, nlust be l\Iary's story.
3. No\v lct us take Luke's narrative apart. He
claims in his preface accurate kno\vledge of the course
of all things from the first, and then promptly begins
,vith the narrative of the birth. Luke is a very honest
nlan and good historian. (The historical statement of

1 John viii. 41.
2 That Jesus was taken to Egypt was the basis of a. Jewish or
heathen accusation that He had learned sorcery there: see Box, The
Virgin Birth oj Ohri8t (Pitman), p. 205.

LUKE'S NARRATIVE 277
Luke ii. 1-2, so long supposed by its falsity to dis-
credit these early chapters, is now no longer regarded
as false, but is found erected into a " proof text" in
learned ,,,'orks about the Roman method of provincial
administration. l ) It is obvious that ,vhen you pass
from Luke's preface to his narrative you pass from
very good literary Greek to a Greek which is Greek
only in the words used. The spirit and method is
quite Aramaic. St. Luke, then, is quoting an Aramaic
document or story. It is a woman's narrative. It is
intensely intimate. It is primeval-that is to say,
it suggests, if read attentively, no idea of an Incarna-
tion, only of the conling of the promised Christ,! and,
though it gives a hint of a searching crisis and anxious
trials to come,s it could not have had its origin after
His rejection by the Jews. The ne,v-born Child is
to be the promised son of David to restore the position
of His house. He is to " have the throne of his father
David," and to "reign over the house of Jacob for
ever." &
\Ve may take it for certain that (to quote Harnack's
,vords) "the conjecture . . . that the idea of a birth
from a virgin is a heathen myth, ,vhich ,vas received
by Christians, contradicts the entire earliest develop-
ments of Christian tradition." The early chapters
both of Matthew and Luke are profoundly and
thoroughly Jewish: Jewish anticipation never in-
cluded a birth from a virgin mother for the l\Iessiah ;
and the whole atmosphere of pagan legend ,vas alien
from the home of these narratives..
I See above, p. 19ï.-
2 See my Disl1ertation, pp. 17-18.
3 Luke ii. 34-5. 4 Luke i. 32-3.
G See Box, cha.p. viii. a.nd my Dissertation, pp. 5:5 fi.; also Harnack,
History oj Dogma (E. T.), vol. i. 100_n., and Luke the Physi.cian,
pp. 102 fi.

278 THE HISTORICA.t\.L EVIDEKCE
I do not see ,,
hy appearances of angelic spirits
should be put aside as obviously false. l But I am
not concerned to deny any influence of pious imagina-
tion upon the story-only that it rests upon a real
experience of l\lary, as to \vhich she could not be
mistaken, viz. that Jesus ,vas not born of a human
father, though He ,vas truly conceived in her ,yomb
and nourished and born in normal fashion.
4. "Then ,ve take St. 1\latthew's narrative we have
to deal ,vith a Gospel the history of ,vhich is obscure.
It is almost certain, I think, that it rests upon the
,york of l\Iatthe\v the apostle and the Gospel of
l\Iark, but ,vhether the first t,vo chapters ,vere con-
tained in 1\Iatthe,v's Aramaic work or come from
the unkno,vn Je\vish editor of the book as ,ve have
it, we cannot tell. Plainly the author, ,vhoever he
was, is deeply interested to find fulfilment of prophecy,
but \v hatever is thought about some of these suggested
fulfilments, it is improbable that the "prophecies"
brought for,vard in evidence in these chapters
suggested the "events" to the imagination of the
writer. The two last are notoriously difficult to
treat as prophecies. The prophecy from l\Iicah
might have suggested, and did suggest, Bethlehem
as the place of Christ's birth, but in the light of recent
vindication of St. Luke's statements, the fact that
Jesus ,vas born there cannot reasonably be impugned.
There remains the Greek version of Isaiah's prophecy,
"The virgin shall be ,vith child," of \v hich it must
be said that it had not suggested to the Je\vs the
idea that the
Iessiah ,vas destined to be born of one
still a virgin. It ,,,,ould appear as if it ,vas only after
the Christians had con1e to believe the facts as recorded
by St. Luke that they discovered this proof text.
1 See above, p. 273.

ST. LUKE AND ST.
IATTHE'V 279
The strongest grounds for believing in its actual
occurrence are the evidence of St. Luke, and the
ovenvhelming indications afforded by the narrative
of St. l\Iatthe,v that it has underlying it the experi-
ences of Joseph.
5. If ,ve take the t,vo narratives together, ,ve find
them utterly independent, and the author of each
one appears to be ignorant of the narrative of the
other. They are not strictly discrepant, but inde-
pendent. The events of each can be fitted into those
of the other, but Luke plainly does not know of the
event of St. ì\Iatthew ii., nor l\Iatthe\v apparently of
the previous residence at Nazareth. But this inde-
pendence of course emphasizes their point of agree-
ment, viz. that Jesus was born at Bethlehem of a
virgin mother.
6. That two discrepant genealogies should have
been admitted into the Gospels (,vhich ,vas felt as
a grave difficulty from the earliest times) is an amaz-
ingly clear sign that the Church ,vas not at all given
to manipulate documents in order to produce
harmony. I think ,ve may be quite content here,
without seeking explanations of the discrepancy, to
recognize that the J e,vish falnilies of pure descent
,vere given to constructing genealogies; that these
genealogies would have affiliated Jesus to His "father"
in whatever sense he ,vas His father; and that all
we are concerned to ask is that these t,vo genealogies
should be taken to represent t,vo. independent attempts
to construct a genealogy for Jesus. 1
7. Criticism of the destructive kind has for long
years fastened on these early chapters of l\Iatthe,v
and Luke as upon the weakest point in the citadel of
the Creeds. I think that those who believe that the
1 See Box, pp. 12 fi. and 38 fi., and Dissertations, p. 38.

280 THE IIISTORICAL EVIDEKCE
historical citadel can be maintained shou]d insist
that the question of the birth is secondary and not
primary, viz. that the question of faith in Jesus must
rest still, where it was made to rest from the begin-
ning, on the life, teaching, death, and resurrection
of Jesus. On these, quite apart from any questions
concerning His birth, the faith stood and still could
stand. Nevertheless, ,,,,hen that standing-ground
has been gained, and the question of the birth,
blackened as it has been ,vith controversy, is
approached, the honest student must not confuse
the raising of every conceivable objection to tl).e
stories with evidence that they are really insecure.
l\Iany of the objections have been fundamentally
refuted. In result I claim that the fair student
cannot resist the conviction that Luke's story sho,vs
every sign of coming from a trust,yorthy source-
one of the only t\""O trustworthy sources-and
I\latthew's narrative from the other; and their
agreement is emphasized by their exceedingly
obvious independence. He must also admit that in
these t\VO narratives there is no later dogmatic
motive at work. The idea of Christ is simply the
J e,vish idea of thc l\lessiah. Nevertheless, when the
story of the birth of Jesus became kno,vn-I suppose
before the destruction of Jerusalem-it was eagerly
\velcon1cd, no doubt because of its harn10ny with
the belief about Christ's person as more than human.
The fact of the virgin birth became at once, it ,vould
appear, by the beginning of the second century, an
element of the creed of the Church, no,v being formu..
lated. 1 This ,vas in part no doubt because of its

1 See Dissertations, p. 41. The evidence of The Odes of Solomon
should now be added.

FACT AND DOCTRI
E 281
felt congruity both ,vith the idea of the divine
incarnation and ,,
ith the idea of Christ as the sinless
source of the ne,y humanity, the second Adam.
Already I think in St. John i. 18 the connexion of the
virgin birth with the sinless source of the regenerated
life is apparent. For myself, I confess I feel this
connexion to be most intimate. I think we are
generally right to resent any attempt to base upon
supposed logical necessity the claim that such and
such an event did actually happen. \Ve doubt the
po,ver of man's reason to say ho,v things must have
happened. l Thus we may be thankful that it is
demonstrable that neither the idea of the incarnation,
nor that of the second Adam, lies behind the narra-
tives of the birth in l\Iatthew and Luke. l\loreover,
the course of our argument has not yet taken us to
the point where the doctrine of Christ's person comes
in question, nor the doctrine of original or racial
sin. Nevertheless, I must confess that I cannot
in1agine how the birth of the really sinless man could
have occurred ,vithout some physical miracle, so sure
do I feel that sin has someho,v affected the physical
stock; and I once drew from Huxley the admission
that if he believed-,vhat he did not-that Jesus
,vas strictly sinless, he would suppose that that
involved as well a physical as a moral miracle. Nor
can I conceive how the birth in the flesh of the divine
person of the Son could have been mediated by

1 Historical Christianity owes ß deep debt of ingratitude to the
Roman Church for having allowed the sense of what would be fitting
in the case of the Blessed Virgin to become the ba.sis for affirming,
with different degrees of dogmatic assurance, as two facts of
history, the immaculate conception and the corporal assumption
into heaven of the Blessed Virgin, for which there is no historical
evidence worth any consideration.

282 THE HISTORICAL EVIDENCE
purely natural means. But these are questiðns
which we are not yet in a position to entertain.

.

.

.

.

\Vhat I have desired to do in this chapter is to let
it appear that, if a person ,,,ill approach the Gospels
,vithout a dogmatic prejudice that n1iracles are
incredible, he will find himself convinced that they
actually occurred, and in particular that Jesus Christ
was really raised from the dead the third day, really
gave to His disciples the syn1bolical assurance of an
ascension heaven,vard, and ,vas really born of a
virgin mother.

CHAPTER XII

CO
CLUSION

LET us reVle,v the course of our argument. After
analysing the causes of the existing collapse in the
religious tradition among Englishmen (chapter i),
we sought to make a fresh start and rebuild from its
foundation the fabric of a rational belief, laying
stress on the importance for everyone of seeking to
form decisions-at least such provisional decisions,
based on the balance of probabilities, as can be
"put to accoun t" by faith, and being verified in
experience can become convictions, or 'v hat St.
John calls knowledge. 1
Thus, after some consideration of the varied means
and methods of apprehending truth (chapter ii),
,ve examined the grounds ,vhich seem to make faith
in God in some sense a rational necessity. But this
sort of philosophical faith ('v hat is called" the higher
Pantheism") ,ve found intellectually unsatisfactory
because of the seriousness and magnitude of the ques-
tions to which it supplies either- no answer or a very
vacillating answer. The inlmanent God of philosophy,
whose transcendence the reason seems unable to
establish, appears on being cross-questioned to be no
more than nature in one of its aspects. His (or its)
personality and character seems uncertain, and the
1 1 John v. 18, 19, 20.
283

284 CO
CLUSIO

grounds for belief or disbelief in the u1timate
supremacy of moral purpose in the world deeply
conflicting. Thus the higher Pantheism is always
in danger of lapsing into the lower Pantheism, and
in result seems to leave us practically '\vhere the
Greeks '\vere before the vast moral uplift of Jewish
and Christian Theism came into our world. Especi-
ally from the religIous point of vie,," this immanent
God ".. ho is to be found in all things, but cannot be
conceived of as entertaining any particular purpose,
or ans'\vering particular prayers, or loving or judging
individual men, is utterly unsatisfying. Our minds
turned longingly to the God of the Hebrew prophets
and the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ
(chapter iii).
We satisfied ourselves that reason has no right to
de(1ide a priori that the old idea of a divine revelation
is rationally untenable, and very carefully we sought
to examine the grounds of this belief. Critically
scrutinized, we found them in a high degree convincing.
\Ve found that it is very hard to resist the conviction
that the prophets and Jesus Christ (regarded at present
as simply one of the prophets) were in touch-as other
men ,vere not-'\vith Reality, ,vith the real God; and
that in a long and continuous process, more or less
gradual, He ,vas really communicating to them the
truth by ,vhich men could live, both about the divine
nature and purpose and about human nature. The
indisputable access of moral po,ver and capacity to
deal ,vith life, ,vhich the faithful recipients of this
word of God are seen to have received of old and still
receive, appears to certificate the truth of the message
which is the source of this new po,ver; for the com-
Inunicated power depends ,,,,holly on the revelation
being regarded as true, that is, as true for the intellect

ARGUl\IENT SUl\Il\IA.RIZED 285
-postulating propositions about God and man and
the universe ,vhich must be truths for philosophy as
well as " practical truths" (chapter iv).
Then ,ve analysed the intellectual content of the
Revelation and found that, ,vhile it needs and can
assimilate, as it did in fact assimilate, the philosophical
belief in the divine immanence in nature, yet it lays
its stress on the Personality of God, His absoluteness,
His transcendence as the creator of all that is, prior
to the ,vorld and independent of it, and His essential
goodness and love. And ,vith regard to man, ,ve
found it emphasizing his freedom, created as he is
for free correspondence ,vith God and for immortal
sonshi p, and also his sins and his sinfulness. This
universal human sin has introduced into the world the
most widespread havoc, and has made necessary a
divine process of judgement and also of redemption,
,vhich, beginning through the Je,vs, sho,vs itself
universal in Jesus Christ, and expresses itself in a
divine kingdom here and no,v at ,york in the world,
and destined for final victory in the Day of the Lord,
when God shall come into His own in His whole
universe (chapter v).
These ne,v data for philosophy we then brought
back to the area of intellectual criticism. We did
not find that (a) science, legitimately so called, could
offer any valid objection to their acceptance, the reality
of freedom in man ,vith all its intellectual implications
being a fact of experience ,vhich s
ience cannot ignore.
Then (b) in the region of philosophy, ,vhen ,ve are
frank with ourselves and candidly open-minded, we
discover that the idea of God which Hebrew religion
supplied to the ,vorld is infinitely more intelligible
than the idea of the philosophers, inasmuch as
personality rather than abstract intellect is its

286

CONCLUSION

dominant category, both in its estimate of God and
of man. In particular ,ve seemed to see the intellectual
necessity for the belief in God the Creator. There
remained, ,ve found, a very real and serious difficulty
in interpreting the ,vhole experience of the universe-
including the seenlÏngly purely material and animal
world-in terms of divine goodness and love. Never-
theless, in the region of human life, the doctrine of
God's goodness has been undoubtedly verified in the
deepest experience of the best of men, not least in
the greatest sufferers, and ,ve could not feel justified
in refusing the act of faith ,vhich assents to it as true
for the whole universe in its final outcome. Also we
satisfied ourselves that (c) neither the science of
comparative religion nor (d) that of historical criticism
offers, so far, any bar to the acceptance of the religion
of the prophets and of Christ as true in fact and for
all men.
Thus our acceptance of the reality of divine
revelation leaves us free men, intellectually, in the
regions of philosophy and the sciences (chapter vi).
This faith postulates God as entertaining and
carrying out a particular purpose of redemption,
which begins with the race of Israel and discloses
itself as universal in Jesus Christ. As proceeding
through a particular race and expressing itself in its
history, the religion of the Old Testament is an historical
religion, but it depends upon no particular incident
which critical science is tempted to deny. But when
we advance upon the New Testament, the situation
is quite different. There the divine self-disclosure
culminates in a particular person, Jesus Christ, who
comes to be believed in as the personal incarnation
of God (though ,vith this special belief about the
person of Christ we are not concerned in this volume) J

ARGUl\;IENT SUl\Il\IARIZED 287
and whose recorded life is full of miraculous incidents,
some of which-as His birth of a virgin, His resurrec-
tion, His ascension-appear as articles in the Christian
Creed-essential elements of the self-disclosure of
God. But criticism has been exhibiting now for
some three generations an even violent aversion to
miracle. Thus the attempt is made to disembarrass
Christianity from the supposed disadvantages of the
miraculous and (generally) of the supernatural.
That an " historical religion" in the Christian sense
has grave disadvantages in a critical age is obvious.
On the other hand, "
e ,vere forced to see how the
strength of Christianity, especially as appealing to
the common man, lay in its being a creed of facts.
In particular we '\vere led to stress the value of facts
for religion by contrast to symbolic stories or Platonic
myths (chapter vii).
Thus, to put the" historical religion" to the test, we
took a preliminary survey of the Gospels and the
rest of the Ne,v Testament documents, and we found
ourselves on very sure grounds of history. The
historicity of the NewTe
tamenton thewhole appeared
to be singularly convincing (chapter viii). We went
back accordingly and examined the underlying spirit
and motive of the destructive criticism of the last
century, and we found that there could be no mistake
about its strong, dogmatic prejudice against the
miraculous and in great part the supernatural, such
as has made the critics most arbitrary and uncritical
in their treatment of the evidence. We examined
the confident assertion of a few English scholars that
the miracles could be eliminated from the Creed
without touching the doctrinal foundation and found
it singularly groundless (chapter ix). Then we
sought to analyse the intellectual bases of this critical

288 CONCLUSIO

prejudice against miracles and against the super-
natural, and seemcd to find in its bases a view of
nature, a
both n1echanical and sclf-complete, which is
,vithout justification. It seemed to us that the fact
of freedom in nature, which inevitably extends itself
from man to God froll1 ,vhom it comes, opens the
door to the possibility of miraculous action, the
postulate of miracles being the real freedon1 of God
to " use means" for the redemption of a world that
sin has destroyed. 'Ve observed that miracles rightly
conceived, or as they are prcsented to us in the N e,v
Testament, are not arbitrary violations of the world
order, but rather divine acts done for the restoration
of an order ,,"hich sin had too grossly violated. Other
aspects of the miraculous ,vere considered, and we
\vere left determined to investigate the question of
evidence ,vithout any obstinate and blinding prejudice
(chapter x). Thus ,ve sought to estimate the evidence
for the reality of our Lord's miracles as a ,vhole, both
" nature miracles" and miracles of healing, and then
in particular the evidence for the great lniraculous
events in our Lord's story, which have been taken up
as elen1ents in the Christian Creed, the resurrection
the third day fronl the dead, the ascension, and the
birth of
Iary the Virgin. It appeared to us that
the evidence of actuaJ occurrence was so cogent that
nothing short of dogmatic a priori assertion of their
impossibility, or at least incredibility-an assertion
which ,ve cannot make-could justify the refusal of it.
And accordingly we are bound to accept these
miracles as real occurrences (chapter xi).
Three points shall be Inade in conclusion:
1. l\Iy aim in this volume has been sin1ply the
reconstruction of bclief in God, and particularly of
such belief in God as is the background and pre-

BIBLICAL IDEA OF GOD 289
supposition of the distinctively Christian beliefs, and
such as is specially due to the prophets of Israel.
But ,ve have been driven upon the field of the New
Testament for t,vo reasons. Though we have con-
sidered Jesus of Nazareth only as a prophet, we
cannot ignore the fact that, ,vhile He bases Himself
upon the religion of the prophets, He yet advances
upon it, and claims to have more to say with an
authority which is altogether His o,vn. Thus the
prophetic doctrine of God is not complete except
with the doctrine of Jesus included. But I have
been driven more directly upon the ground of Ne,v
Testament criticism by the question of miracles, and
this because it is directly bound up ,vith the funda-
mental question of the nature of God; and before you
can have satisfactory discussion of the specifically
Christian questions-about Christ's person-about
the atonement-about the Holy Trinity-you must
have reached a stable position about this doctrine of
God. N o,v if, as has been contended in this book,
the prophets of Israel were the organs of a real
self-disclosure of God, intended for the whole world
but given in the first instance through them, then
there can be to my mind no question at all but that
miracles of God's "
orking are possible and credible
on adequate evidence. The evidence is there, cogent
and, as it ,vould seem, unans,verable. '\Vhat hinders
, acceptance of the miraculous is the absence of belief
that the God of the prophets is the real God. There
,viII be no revival of specifically Christian belief
except on the basis of, or accompanied ,vith, a revived
belief in the God of the prophets, and, conversely,
granted the God of the prophets to be real, the claim
for n1Ìracles ,,,,ill be at least no obstacle to belief in
the Creeds. I go further and say that miracles, i.e.
20

290

CONCLUSION

actions of God in nature marking His special intention
for the redemption of mankind, "Till seem, at the
crucial moment of religious history, so natural as to
be almost inevitable accompaninlents of the revelatioll.
On the other hand, the disbelief in miracles is not
really based on historical criticism, but on a belief
about God ,vhich is at bottom a rejection of the
prophetic claim to reveal the real God, and a return
to "That is substantially the Greek philosophic theory
of God, ,vhich Christianity in part assimilated, but
in more important respects displaced. This higher
Pantheism, both of the ancient Greeks and of the
majority of modern philosophers, has so feeble a hold
on the di vine transcendence, and even personality,
and at bottom is so deeply inclined to an identification
of God and nature, like Spinoza's, that it can find no
place for miracles and is bound to explain them a,vay.
But also the faith of the higher Pantheism is so uncertain
of the moral character of the Ultimate Reality-so
uncertain whether goodness is more than one element
in a universe which is much greater than it-as to
weaken profoundly, especially in the conscience of
the" ordinary man," the sense of the final supremacy
of moral purpose in the ,,"orid. This is to say, in other
words, that the higher Pantheism tends inevitably
in common opinion to b
come the 100\ver Pantheism,
,vhich merges God in nature and takes fOl" inevitable
all that is. I do not think it is open to doubt that
the belief in the real occurrence of n1iracles and the
belief in the God of the prophets are bound up with
one another in an inevitable coherence. And, on the
other hand, by a like inevitable coherence, the denial
of the credibility of n1iracles is bound up with a
disbelief in the prophetic God and a relapse upon a
kind of Pantheism ,vhich substantially is that of the

THE QUESTION OF FREEDOl\l CRUCIAL 291
Greek philosophers, especially in its effect or lack of
effect upon the common conscience.
2. Secondly, I ,vant to make this point. I think
the decision in the great alternative, to which I have
just called attention, turns, to an extent which it is
hard to exaggerate, upon the question of the reality
of free,vill in n1an, not in any exaggerated sense, but in
the restricted yet real sense ,vhich I have endeavoured
to define above. l If man is really free, there is a
real element of creativeness and spontaneity and
contingency in the heart of nature, the conception of
which may be extended indefinitely, but ,vhich is, at
least, there ,vhere man is. The time process, the
true meaning of ,vhich becomes first apparent in man,
is then shown to have real meaning. God may,
nay, as I have contended, must, be conceived of as
prior to creation or nature, complete in Himself.
But creation, or the process of nature, is a continuous
process in which it is the purpose of God to reproduce
in a gradual order, and finally, at least, by the co-
operation of free spirits, an expression of His being
and will. This is ,vhat we may reverently call an
enterprise or an adventure on the part of God, because
the element of freedom-freedom which Inay prove
lawless-is something which God Himself will not
overrule. The time series represents, ,vith all its
elements of contingency and uncertainty, a real and
long-continued effort of God, though its end is certain.
And this freedom allowed to man postulates a like
and much deeper freedom in God, and supplies, as has
been pointed out, the rationale for God's miraculous
actions-that is, His occasional innovations upon
normal method. On the other hand, if freedom is
denied to man, it becomes natura] to think of real
1 See above, pp. 139 fi., 234 fi.

292

CONCLUSION

freedom as a vain imagination in the case of God also.
Nature becomes sin1ply the necessary self-expression
of God. \Vhatever is, could not have been otherwise.
The ,vhole time series becomes inevitable, and, nlore
than inevitable, illusory. All that, at the bottom, is
really there for the purified intellect to contemplate
is the absolute nature, the eternal and inevitable
" nlust have been."
3. Finally, I want to point out the modification
which belicf in the reality of the self-disclosure of
God through the Hebre,v prophets introduces into the
current doctrine of Relativity, of \vhich Lord Haldane
has recently been the prophet. No one, I think,
can dispute the truth of this doctrine, though ,,,hether
Einstein's discoveries and theories do more than sho\v
it in a novel light I do not feel sure. Anyway, the
postulates of each branch of human science are not
final and necessary truths, but are relative to the
particular science; and the absolute point of view,
from ,vhich all must be harmonized, is hard to come
by, and may be unattainable for ever by the finite
minds of nlen. Certainly the mind of man is not
capable of discovering absolute truth. This applies
to moral truth as much as to any other department
of reality. The judgements of the conscience are not,
and never can be, absolutely the judgements of God.
It applies also (even on the postulate of revelation)
to theology. The theologians have always emphasized
this. " We see through a glass darkly" in our thought
about the ultimate things. Nevertheless, this neces-
sary doctrine of relativity does not supply any valid
ground for excluding the idea that behind the veil of
creation lies the Personal God. Creation, as Dr.
Pringle Pattison and Lord Haldane say, appears in
" layers": upon the merely physical or materia]

THE DOCTRINE OF RELATIVITY 293
supervenes the vital, and upon the vital the rational
and the personal. And the personal is, at least, a
better image of God than the merely vital or merely
mechanical. God, be it said, is superpersonal, but
at least personal. Then also the supremely personal
can act as a person. He can reveal Himself more
intensely here than there. There is no legitimate
ground for a dogmatic exclusion of this possibility.
And on the surest grounds, as it seems to us, "
e have
found this to be not only possible as a theory but
actual as a fact. For those who accept revelation
as a fact, in a particular line of history, mediated
through the prophets of Israel and culminating in
Christ, the doctrine of relativity is certainly not
obliterated or negatived. The revelation of God in
Christ may be spoken of as establishing" the absolute
religion," in the sense that it is, for this world, final
and universal, but it does not mean that" the absolute
truth" is there unveiled.. At least Christianity has
never made any such claim. It has never claimed
for us in our present condition the po,ver to see God
as He is. But, granted this, it does, none the less,
introduce a limiting element into the doctrine of
relativity. For here, given through the prophets
and in Christ, "
e have not merely a judgement of
human reason or conscience liable to all the
uncertainties and relativities of such a judgement, but
a real ,vord of God. Such ,vord of God is given through
men and for men, as they no, v are, and must therefore
be, as compared to absolute truth, relative and
hnperfect. But the truth \vhich the self-disclosure
of God enables us and requires us to put into human
words is, as compared to all other human proposi-
tions about God, necessariìy of a higher quality and
infinitely more trust,vorthy. Any real belief in a

294

CONCLUSION

divine self-disclosure carries ,vith it the belief that
the ,vord of God is trustworthy and has an infinitely
higher measure of truth than any merely human
judgement. Granted that it is gradually given, yet
it must be at each stage as close an expression of
absolute truth as human thought and ,vords adn1Ït of.
It is for practical purposes absolute truth, becaùse
it can be relied on utterly. This gradual revelation
in its earlier stages ,vas al,vays invested ,vith divine
authority as far as it ,vent. But in Christ it is
postulated for it that it attains completeness and
finality. That claim ,ve ha ve not yet sought to
estimate. Without assun1Íng finality for Christ, let us
be content to recognize that if ,ve believe the authority
behind the prophets and Jesus Christ really to be
the will of the Personal God revealing Himself to
man, the ",vord of God" proclaimed by them must
be admitted to be in such real sense absolutely true,
that it is true for all men and the highest kind of
truth about God ,vhich lnan can attain. It is abso-
lutely true in the sense that any human propositions
which really ignore it or contradict it are misleading
and false.

TABLE OF SUBJECTS

CHAPTER I. The Breal;:down oj Tradition (about 1850). The
causes: (1) the effects of Darwinism in popular thought,
pp. 6-13; (2) the effect of Biblical criticism, 13-17;
(3) the comparative study of religions, 17-19; (4) the
revolt of conscience against Calvinism, 19-20. l\Iore
recent causes of unsettlelnent: (1) Democracy in thought,
(2) revolt against moral standard, (3) individualism,
(4) modern psychology, (5) new religions, (6) the Great
War, 21-6; neeù to begin reconstruction from the
foundations, 26-8.

CHAPTER II. The Conditions oJ Ilopeful Reconstruction.
(1) Freedom from bitterness, pp. 30-1; (2) intellectual
decision, 31-5; (3) recognition of manifold basis of
certitude; intuition and mysticism, 35-43; legitimate
and illegitimate praejudicia, 43-4.

CHAPTER III. Grounds of Belief in God. Monotheism alone
possible, pp. 46-8. The grounds of belief: (1) Reason
or mind in the universe corresponding to mind in man,
the epistemological argument, 49-52; (2) the argument
fronl beauty, 52-4; (3) the ar 6 ument from the moral
conscience, 54-7; the higher pantheism, 57-8; science
no obstacle, 58-61 ; but the inadequacy of this philosophic
creed; momentous questions raised and not answered,
61-6; the idea of revelation not to be excluded a priori,
66-9; Dr. Pringle Pattison on the transcendent God:
69-73.

295

296

TABLE OF SUBJECTS

CHAPTER IV. Tile Qucstion oj Revelation. The claim of
Israel's prophets. The precise question lin1ited, pp. 74-8;
the nature and grounds of the clain1, 78-82; misconcep-
tions to be obviated: (1) the lowly natural origin of the
prophets, 83-8; (2) the prophets in that sense foretelJers,
88-92; (3) the question of natural evolution, 92-4;
(4) the prophetic succession culminating in Jesus, 94-6.
Proposed" explanations" of the prophetic message. It
is not: (1) a s
of philosophical conclusions, 97-8;
nor (2) the results of "experience," 98-9; nor (3) the
outcome of any "Semitic genius for monotheism,"
99-102; nor (4) an " uprush from the unconscious mind,"
102-6. The moral results of accepting the prophetic
message as divine, 106-9.

CHAPTER V. The Contents of tlte Prophetic Faith. Given as
practical guidance, but involving intellectual propositions,
pp. 110-13: (1) the personaJity of God, 113-14; (2)
Jehovah the absolute being, 114-15-"ith qualifications
involved in (a) creation of free beings, 115-17, (b) the
divine perfection, 117-20; (3) the moral perfection of
God, 120-2; (4) God the absolute creator, 122-24;
(5) the freedom of man, 121-7; (6) the day of the Lord
and the world to come, 1
7-8. New data for philosophy,
129; the Greek philosophical synthesis in early days,
129-31; synthesis in the middle ages, 131; needed
to-day-and the way thereto, 131-2.

CHAPTER VI. RCl'elation and Reason. The data of revelation
at the bar of reason and the sciences, pp. 134-6. (1) The
physical sciences, slow evolution, 137-9; real freeùom of
wills, 139-4-J.(sce also p.170 n. and pp. 234-6); (2) philosophy
-personality of God, 146; God eternally self-conscious,
147; the absolute, 147-8; the absolute creator, 148-53 ;
personal irrunortality, 153-6; God is love-the real
difficulty, 156-63; (3) comparative religions, 163-6;
(4) Biblical criticism, 166-9.

TABLE OF SUBJECTS

297

CHAPTER VII. The IIistorical Religion. Term applicable to
Old Testament but specially to New Testament religion-
pp. 171-3; intellectual revolt against idea of the
miraculous; the peril of historical religion, and its manifest
advantage, 173-5; its iInplications: (1) idea of God,
175-6; (2) free criticism of documents, 176-7; (3) the
religion of fact against the rcIigion of symbolism, 177-82.

CHAPTER VIII. The Historical Worth of the New Testam,ent.
Recent reactions in critical opinion-Harnack, pp. 184-6.
(1) The trustworthiness 01 the Gospels: St. l\iark, 186-93;
St. Luke and Acts, 193-201 ; the n1aterial of the Synoptist's
data before A.D. 70, 201; St. l\Iatthew's Gospel and
St. John's, 202-4; silence of contemporary historians,
204-6. (2) The presupposition 01 the Epistles, 207-9;
Epistles before Gospels, 209-10. (3) The Epistles, 210-13;
the Pastoral Epistles, 213-14.

CHAPTER IX. The P'rcjudice 01 Cr'iticism against the miraculous
and generally the supernatural. Renan, pp. 216-17;
Schweitzer's survey of German criticism, 217-21; Super-
natural Religion, 221 ; Dr. Sanday, 221-2; untenable
position, 223-8; Bishop Creighton, 229 n.

CHAPTER X. The Prejudice Eæamined. Definition of" miracle"
and" supernatural," pp. 231-3. (1) The conception 01 a
closed system of nature: Stoics; Spinoza ; inconsistent with
fact of freedom in man; the freedom of God; Augustine
on miracles, 233-41. (2) :ðliracles 01 Christ the" natural"
acts 01 His new nature as God in manhood: argument
not to be presseù, 241-5; scientific prejudice against
miracle, 245-6. (3) The historical argument, 246-9.
(4) Current acceptance of miracles, as by spiritism,
249-51; miracles not impossible nor incredible, 251.

CHAPTER XI. The IIistorical Evidence lor IJliracles. "The
neurotic theory" pp. 252-3; St. l\Iark's Gospel, 253-4 ;

208

TABLE OF SUBJECTS

" Q," 254-6; tendency to accretion, 256-7; the place of
miracle in the New Testament, 257-8; in the contemporary
empire, 258-9; miracle and morality, 259-60; miracle in the
early church, 260-1 ; in the middle ages, 261. (1) Evidence
of the resurrection, 262-72; (2) oj the ascension, 272-3 ;
(3) oj the virgin birth of Jesus, 274-82.

CHAPTER XII. Conclusion. Summary of the argument of the
book, pp. 283-8: (1) TI
e real question-Do we believe
in the God of the prophets and the Father of our Lord
Jesus Christ? 288-91. (2) The crucial question the
question of free 'v ill , 291-2. (3) The doctrine of
relativity, and its modification by belief in divine
self-revelation, 292-4.

INDEX OF NAl\IES

Akhnaton, 100
Alexander (of Aphrodisias), 233
Alexander (S.), 51
Athanasius (St.), 82
Augustine (St.), 10, 153 n., 239 f.
Bacon (Francis), 6
Batiffol (:I\'Ionseigneur), 192 n.,
205 n., 206 n.
Baur (Ferdinand), 16
Beethoven, 35
Bergson (H.), 59, 71, 140
Bosanquet (Bernard), 3 n., 154
Box (Dr.), 197 n., 274 n., 276 n.,
277 n.
Bradley (F.H.),39 n.,112 n., 154
Bragg (Sir W.), 38
Brontë (Emily), 151 n.
Bruce (A. B.), 191 n.
Buddha (The), 165, 171
B uffon, 7
Butler (Bp.), 30, 91, 131 n., 160,
232 n.
Butler (Samuel), 7 n.
Carpenter (W. B.), 103
Chrysostom (St.), 83, 260 f.
Clement (of Rome), 213
Clifford (W. K.), 9
Creighton (Bp.), 229 n.
Croce (Bened.) 1 132 n.

Dante, 234
Darwin (Charles), 7, 8, 9, 12, 35,
53, 60, 161
Darwin (Erasmus), 7
Delehaye (Père), 249, 261
De :l\lorgan (W.), 35
Descartes, 29, 64, 75
De Wette, 14
Dickinson (G. Lowes}: 166 D.

Euripides, 162 D.
Ewald, 14

Glover (Dr.), 226
Goethe, 7
Gooch (G. P.), 13 n.
Gregory (St., of Nyssa), 10
Haldane (Lord),ð2 n.,57 n., 60 n.;
63 n., 137 D., 240 n., 243 D.
292
IIamilton (H. F.), 97 n.
Harnack (Adolph), 185, 195, 218
Hawkins (Sir J.), 194 n.
Hinton (James), 33
Hobart, 194 n.
Hooker (Richard), 118 n., 131 n.
Huxley, 12, 161, 281
Inge (Dean), 58 n., 174, 226
Irenaeus (St.), 47 n.
James (St.), 125
Jesus Christ, 80-1, 94-6
John (St.), 203
Johnson (Samuel), 13 n.
Johnston (J. L.), 166 n.
Jones (Wood), 13 n.
Josephus, 204, 206
Kant, 8 n., 55, 235

Lake (Kirsopp), 19 n., 102 n.,
221, 226
Lamarck, 7
Lankester (Sir E. R.), 158
Latham (Dr.), 268 n.
Lindsay (T. :1\1.), 6 D.
Linnaeus, 6
Lodge (Sir 0.), 250
299

BOO

INDEX OF NA1tlES

Loofs (Dr.), 223
Luke (St.), 193 fi., 207, 254 n.,
270 f., 276 fi.
Mackonochie (A. H.), 29 n.
Marcus Aurelius, 46
1vIark (St.), 186 fi., 252 f., 270 f.
:Matthew (St.), 202 f., 256, 278 f.
l\Iesha (King of Moab), 84, 86
Milton, 6, 9, II
l\Iohammed, 37, 172
l\Ioore (Aubrey), 6 n., 13 n.
:Mozley (J. B.), 53

Niebuhr, 14
Nöldeke, 100 n.
Origen, 259, 260 n.

Paley (Archd.), 5, 7 n., 131 n.
Papias, 186, 190 n., 202
Pa.steur, 41
Paul (St.), 49 n., 66, 78 n., Ill,
119, 127 n., 173, 178, 179,
189 n., 207 fi., 213 f., 264 fi.
Plato, 44 n., 68
Pratt (J. B.), 24, 104 n., 106 n.,
123 n , 240 n.
Pringle-Pattison, 45 n., 57 n.,
59 n., 61 D., 65, 69 fi., 149,
175, 243 n.
Prophets (of Israel), 76-106

" Q," 199, 254 f.

Rackham (R. B.), 193, 195 f.
Ramsay (Sir W.), 186 n., 195,
197
Rashdall (Dean), 170 n., 226
Ray (John), 6
Relton (Dr.), 144

Renan, 16, 31, 216 f.
Retté (Adolphe), 9 n.
Ritschl (Alb.), 112, 174
Romanes (0.), 41
Ryle (Dr. R.), 253 D.
Sadhu (The), 36 n., 250
Sanday (Dr.), 79 n., 101 n., 222,
224, 228, 247, 253
Schiller (F. C. S.), 144 n.
Schweitzer (Alb.), 217
Sha.kespeare, 159 n.
Shaw (Bernard), 7 n.
Sophocles, 55
Sodey (W. R.), 57 n.
South (Dr.), 9
Spinoza, 64, 65, 71, 72, 75, 233 f.
Spencer (Herbert), 13
Strauss, 16, 219 f.
Supernatural Religion, 221
Swete (Dr.), 269

Tacitus, 205, 258
Temple (Bp.), 68
Tennant (Ii'. R.), 26
Tertullian, 42 n.
ThOlnson (J. A.) and Geddes (P.),
13 n., 161
Tolstoy, 40, 166 n.
Treviranus, 7

Vespasian, 258 f.
Von Hügel (Fr.), 144 n.
'Vallace, 7
'Vebb (Clem.), 65, 114, 182 n.
'Veils (H. G.), 17,47
'Volf, 14
'V ordsworth, 48, 54, 55

Zeno, 141

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